Guest Blogger

Serving Military Families in the Public Library

Have you ever presented a program and learned something unexpected about your library users? At Williamsburg Regional Library in Virginia we ran a storytime focusing on military families and two nonagenarians saw the event listed in the local paper and attended, complete with walkers! They decided not to stay for picture books and songs, but first they regaled us with tales of traveling with their soldier husbands to ravaged, post-World War II Germany. What did we learn? Firstly that “All Ages” in the local paper may be interpreted literally. Secondly, that there is plenty of community interest in military family lifestyles. You may think services to military families are not relevant to your library, but consider that over two million American children have had a parent deployed since 9/11, and current military families total over five million people. If you include veterans, military retirees, Department of Defense civilians, grown military…