“I get paid to do the Hokey Pokey. It’s kind of a cool gig,” Anne Leyon Kilkenny says of her job at Providence Public Library (PPL) on Empire Street.
She joined PPL 15 years ago as an early childhood/children’s educator, which was a new position at the time. The Library, a 150-year-old nonprofit institution, wanted to make early childhood and literacy a focal point, she explains.
“I found my dream job,” she says. “What I enjoy the most is the time I get to spend with the children and their families. They always make me smile.”
Kilkenny has always loved working with children, from the age of 10 when she was babysitting, to when she ran a child care center in northern Rhode Island for 12 years before joining PPL. She’s also an adjunct professor of early childhood education at Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI).
She coordinates and runs PPL’s Storytime program, such as Baby Steps, for infants through 18 months old; Cradle to Crayons, for 1-3 year olds; and Outdoor Storytime, which is geared for children up to 5 years old.
Storytime starts with a gathering activity. After some songs and rhymes, Kilkenny reads to the youngsters, many sitting in the lap of a parent or caregiver, who are encouraged to read to their children at home. “Forming a connection to the person reading to them is important, because they’ll associate that with a book,” she says.
The program aims to instill a love of reading into the children, which they’ll carry into adulthood. “It is very important for children to realize that reading is a pleasurable experience. When helping the older children choose books to read, I always ask them what was the last book they read that they liked. Then I have something to go on.”
Kilkenny will ask the children what they like to do, be it making things with magnet tiles or with clay, or playing a sport like soccer. Then it’s a matter of matching the book to the interest.
Sometimes Kilkenny and the other librarians involved in the various programs will come across a reluctant reader. “We try to hook them up with their favorite character or animal. In some ways it’s like introducing them to a new food, you ask them to try a bite, and the next time maybe they’ll try two bites,” she explains.
For youth 6 – 12 years old, PPL offers Young Creators, a series of 4-part programs focused on such topics as creative movement, music, art, and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). The Library provides all of the materials used in the sessions.
For its program called Mindspark: Igniting Futures Through STEM, PPL packs hands-on activities, group projects, and multimedia into its 6-week run. The youth are paired with middle- or high-school mentors for the duration.
“It’s great seeing the older students involved with the younger folks,” Kilkenny comments. “While the middle- and high-schoolers are building their own leadership skills, they’re also acting as role models for the elementary school kids.”
It’s an important part of helping the youngsters and students build their social and emotional skills, and fostering community at the same time. “That’s what makes us human,” Kilkenny adds, “that sense of community and connection.”
Indeed, PPL has deliberately designed itself as a free space that’s all about accessibility and equity, Kilkenny emphasizes. No matter how young or old a person is, they just have to walk in. They can read a book or magazine, go online, or take part in one of the Library’s many workshops, such as computer science or sewing. There are adult education classes, along with teen services and childhood services.
Over the years, the Library has developed a richness in the amount and variety of the programs it offers, according to Kilkenny. That was the driving force behind PPL’s major renovation, which started in September 2018 and was completed in May 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the full reopening until the following year.
The renovation was a challenge for Storytime, Kilkenny recalls. The children’s library on the first floor was dismantled, and moved to an upper floor. Its former space is now a big workshop area.
During the renovation, Kilkenny was able to move Storytime to the nearby Grace Episcopal Church on Westminster Street, until the pandemic brought an end to all in-person programs.
The big challenge during that time was keeping the library going during a lockdown. “We learned things,” Kilkenny relates, such as how to set up and conduct virtual classes and Storytime sessions.
And the experience got PPL and other libraries thinking about how to best deliver their services to their communities, whether it’s how their open hours are structured, setting up online offerings, making programs available in languages in addition to English, such as Spanish, Portuguese, and Mon-Khmer/Cambodian.
However, looming large is the White House’s deliberate drying up of federal money available to libraries and to the arts. “We lost funding for our newspaper digitalization project,” Kilkenny points out, referring to the state’s participation in the National Digital Newspaper Project, a collaboration led by the Library of Congress (LC) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
The Library was digitizing RI newspapers for an addition to the LC Chronicling America website. It was funded in 2-year cycles. PPL was supposed to have funding through August, but on April 3 received a letter saying that the grant was terminated, effective immediately.
About 80 percent of PPL’s budget comes from grants and donations. The library is looking at ways of filling the federal shortfall. It’ll take a page from its own book and learn something new about funding.
Because that’s what a library is all about. As Kilkenny puts it: “This is a place where anyone, and where everyone, can come in and try something new, and learn something new. We do this every day.”
She concludes, “Libraries aren’t a community center. They are the center of the community.”
Information about PPL and its programs can be found on provlib.org