January at the Barnet Library brings both the warm and cozy of reading together on our couches, the warbling and sometimes screeching of our after schoolers, and the welcoming glow of our evening hours lights reflecting off the snow. It is a content and calm we love to offer as an escape from the wild and wooly outside.
This year, however, behind the scenes, the librarians are busy! We are excited to announce very unique programming coming your way! Thanks to some major support from the Vermont Humanities Council we are able to offer free classes this coming year as part of our One Foot Forward resilience programming. In July, we are one of only 3 libraries in Vermont able to bring you a Smithsonian Institute exhibit.
All of our events will be announced on our website and social media so keep an eye out! Our first program is a seed swap and Q and A on January 31, National Seed Swap Day. Following are classes like Chair Yoga, a Serviceberry book club with a free Serviceberry bush for participants, The Art of Traditional and Sustainable Trapping, Food Fermentation with hands on guidance, Community Printing with local printers from Hard-Pressed community press, a Circus Arts workshop for kids, and more! Our hope is to give our patrons fun and useful skills for a more resilient community.
The Smithsonian exhibit is specifically designed to encourage and foster conversation, discussion and innovation. It is part of a dialogue called Spark! This specific installation is on Rural Innovators in America. What better place to celebrate great Innovators than Vermont? Hosting this Museum on Main street exhibit, also graciously funded by the Vermont and NH Humanities Councils, provides us with funding to create our own, local display on local innovators. We are celebrating Ben’s Mill along with a few other standouts. This display will be a permanent one here at the library. Eventually, the cabinet will function as a space for the Barnet Historical Society to rotate some of its vast collection. We are collaborating with local historians and museum curators during this process. The Smithsonian panels will take up the entire children's room for August and a week of September. Luckily, we have those mobile shelves and will continue to provide stellar library book service throughout this period.
We truly encourage our patrons to come into the library for the serendipity it often provides. You truly never know who you will find to connect with. This seems an incredibly important priority when one feels isolated, for whatever reason. Sometimes folks find commonality in books, and, as we know, the weather is the great uniter. But often it is simply the first meeting of new neighbors or rekindled friendships of the past, all from walking into the library with an open heart and mind. Every day, people find each other here, if only for a moment.
In the meantime, enjoy the sometime hibernation of winter, and know we are scurrying around behind the scenes here about to burst forth with new and exciting offerings through the next year.

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