Schuylerville Public Library News

Have you always wanted a t-shirt, sweatshirt, or other merchandise that celebrates your love for our library? You're in luck! The Advocates for the Schuylerville Public Library have partnered with Val's Sporting Goods in Mechanicville to create a whole line of branded merchandise available for you to purchase. If you'd like to give these items as a gift this holiday season, please have your orders in by November 17th. The link to order can be found here.

As many of you may have already learned, the library is looking to expand our physical space to better serve our community. Financial and community support is needed in order to make our dream of a better-sized facility a reality.

There will be a public vote in 2025 for the community to decide if they are ready for the Library to move forward with this expansion. Additionally, the Advocates for the Schuylerville Public Library will be fundraising for the project with a financial goal of $200,000.

With 56 years since our last capital campaign and major expansion, we understand how significant this change is. When it was completed in 1968, our current building was built to serve just over 1,400 residents. After transitioning from a Village Library to a School District Library in 2013, we now provide service to just over 10,000 residents. Our goal has been and continues to be to serve our community to the best of our ability, and our greatest limitation to that at present is our physical space.

If you would like to learn more about this campaign, donate (buy a brick), and/or share your time or talent, please visit https://schuylervillelibrary.sals.edu/index.php/turning-a-page-capital-campaign/ to learn more.

• November 11th for Veterans' Day
• November 27th close at 4pm for Thanksgiving Holiday
• November 28th for Thanksgiving Holiday
• November 29th for Thanksgiving Holiday

Managing our own mental health, our physical health, and importantly our stress levels can be improved by getting a bit creative. Researchers have found that 75% of your cortisol levels are lowered during 45 minutes of making art. When you create art, your brain is focused on what you are creating, which tends to clear your mind and is similar to meditation, becoming a time for self-care and relaxation. Join us on Friday November 22 at 6pm to create some art in order to help reduce stress.

With this program, we aim to:

• Be mindful - Engaging in creative activities can promote mindfulness, which can help reduce stress levels. Focusing on the present moment and the creative process can help reduce anxiety and promote relaxation.
• Find a distraction - Creative activities can be a healthy distraction from stressors and worries. Engaging in a creative task can help shift the focus away from negative thoughts and promote feelings of accomplishment and satisfaction.
• Enter the 'flow state' - Engaging in creative pursuits can trigger a flow state, a state of complete absorption in the present. This mindfulness pushes worries and anxieties to the background, promoting relaxation and lowering stress levels.
• Encourage self-care - Engaging in creative activities can be a form of self-care, promoting feelings of self-worth and self-esteem.
• Help structure your time - Creative projects can provide a sense of purpose and structure, helping to reducing anxiety about time management, giving you something to look forward to and providing a consistent plan for your brain and body to reduce stress built up through the day, week or month. Foster social connection - Participating in group creative activities or sharing one's art with others can promote social connection and reduce feelings of isolation and loneliness.

Miss Brandi is excited to announce a new program catering specifically to babies ages 0-18 months and their families. "Baby Steps" is a program that supports early development through meaningful play. Activities will focus on several skills including: motor skills, language, fingerplay, and sensory. Examples of specific activities can be found on the event page.

Baby Steps will meet on Mondays from 10:30am to 11:15am. This is a drop-in event, registration is NOT required.

On Friday November 15th join us for a LEGO Free Play hour! You can play with the library's LEGO or bring your own from home.

If you bring from home, please be sure to log in what LEGO Kits or LEGO's you bring from home, on our 'LEGO from home login sheet'.

We are not responsible for lost or stolen toys so please keep an eye on what you bring.

There will be some Lego Play Idea Cards available if you need help thinking of something to build.

Are you interested in going to college or going back to school? Perhaps looking for a new job or feeling unsettled in your current career? On the second Tuesday of every month between 5:30-7:30,

allow our library staff to help you in a one-on-one, half-hour appointment.

Support we can provide: help editing/updating resumes, assistance using college application and job websites, clarifications when filling out applications, taking career assessments.

Registration is required. Use one of our computers or bring your own device.

October 8th - Family Movie Night showing "Despicable Me 4"

October 15th - Family Movie Night showing "Free Birds"

Book Club will be meeting on the third Wednesday instead of the fourth this month because of Thanksgiving. Our meeting will be November 20th at 7pm in the Reading Room and we're discussing A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd. This will be our final meeting of the year.

If you would like to participate, come by the library and pick up a copy of the book, we have them on hold about a month before the meeting. Registration is not required. We hope to see you there!

Cookbook Club has no meeting in November but we will be having our cookie exchange on Thursday December 5th at 6:30pm! Registration for the cookie exchange is required and can be found here. Please note that you will need to know what cookies you are bringing in advance to limit duplicates and participants should anticipate making at least 4 dozen cookies for the exchange. Please contact Beth (bwrisley@sals.edu) if you have any questions.

If you are not currently a part of cookbook club, but are interested in being on our mailing list, please fill out this form. You can also feel free to make a dish and come by!

Shorts and Stouts, our partnership book club with Bound by Fate Brewing will be meeting on November 21st at 5pm. Our story for November is "Spider the Artist" by Nnedi Okorafor, which can be found here. Come join us for lively conversation, excellent beer, and delicious Laotian food at the Bound by Fate taproom!

It's a new month, with a new opportunity to learn a little bit about our staff. Each month we ask the SPL staff a question. This month we asked, "What is your favorite way to say 'hello'?" November 21 is World Hello Day, which celebrates communication and the role it plays in preserving peace.

Caitlin: "Hi"

Julie: "My favorite way to say hello is 'Hola!'"

Holly: "I think I mostly stick to the basic, classic greeting of "Hello" nearly 85 percent of the time."

Emilly: "Hey, how's it going?"

Jessica: "Just a "Hi" and a smile from me 🙂"

Beth: "I've got two favorites. One is salutations! A nod to the iconic Charlotte from Charlotte's Web. The other is hej hej (pronounced hey hey) which is a casual Swedish hello."

Brandi: "My daughter and I have been learning Japanese in hopes to visit my Uncle who lives in Japan at some point, so we say "Konnichiwa"

Mary Lou: "I tend to tailor my salutation according to whom I am speaking. If it is a younger person, say 30''s-40's, the "Hey, how's it going" works well. For more adult/older folks, (50's-90's) "Hi, so good to see you" or "Hello, how are you doing" fits the bill.

Sometimes with really young people (older elementary age and teens)...and this is from days as an educator.... I find "How's it going gentleman//How's it going ladies" seems to be well received, and I usually get response!!!"

Monday - Friday 10am-8pm

Saturday 10am-2pm

Email: svl-director@sals.edu
Website: https://schuylervillelibrary.sals.edu/
Location: 52 Ferry Street, Schuylerville, NY, USA
Phone: 518-695-6641
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SchuylervillePublicLibrary/
Twitter: @SVL_Library

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/schuylerville_library/