Here are a few highlights from February 2025 at RDPL!
World Bookmark Day Contest!
February 25 is World Bookmark Day! To celebrate, we held our very first bookmark design contest. With nearly 300 submissions, it was VERY hard to choose our winners! In the end we selected 15 winning designs, each of which received 25 copies of their bookmark to share with family and friends, as well as an RDPL swag bag prize. We had the winning bookmarks professionally printed, and they are available at our Downtown, Dawe, and Timberlands branches for library visitors to pick up, free of charge, while supplies last. They are SO GOOD – you must check them out!
You can see all of the winning designs over at rdpl.org/bookmark-day, opens a new window!
Shoutout to Shannon!
Here is an anecdote from one of our RDPL staff:
I was working with our wonderful Shannon in children’s downtown recently and a family that she has had in her programs since they were just little beans came in. Shannon peeked out from behind the shelf and the kids lit up and came right over to her to say hi. They said they see her all the time at the library and at swimming too and Shannon said we are like family! The kids loved this and nodded that yes we are! It warmed my heart so much to see the connection Shannon has with the families from her programs.
Celebrating Black History Month
We partnered with Ubuntu to offer a series of special Saturday storytimes featuring guest readers from Red Deer’s Black Community. We also set up displays at all branches to encourage patrons to check out some of the great books in our collection. Children and their parents appreciated the diverse stories and crafts and we received great feedback from participants!
Family Board Game Day
On February 18th Deb, Simon, and Saraf hosted a Giant Board Game day for families at the Downtown Branch. Families of all ages joined us to play life-sized Candyland, Giant Sorry, and Connect 4. It was a great opportunity to connect with School-aged children and their parents and give them a fun activity to do together at the library!
Adult Literacy Program Updates
The Adult Literacy Program welcomed 11 new tutors and 23 new learners in February. Twenty-nine (29) pairs were matched with 122 learners still on the waitlist. In order to provide some learning opportunities to individuals on the waitlist, the Adult Literacy Program offered 7 language learning classes that focus on different levels of English language learning.
The Adult Literacy Program launched a very successful new program, Conversation Café (pictured below). 16 volunteers from the community are helping 31 learners from all over the world practice their English language skills in a real-world setting. The Program has received positive feedback about this opportunity from both volunteers and learners and hopes to offer it again in the future.
Access to Justice Week
For Access to Justice Week, we offered use of the theatre on February 4th for patrons to connect with lawyers arranged by the Community Legal Clinic. In addition to the oversubscribed regular programs at Dawe branch, we now have lawyers available for drop-in discussions of Criminal Law matters, opens a new window at the Downtown Branch the first Monday of the month.
Teen Café Fun!
At Teen Café on February 11th, the teens made pompom keychains and we were absolutely blown away by their creativity. There were some awesome opossums!
Bright Minds Speaker Series
Doug Doran gave an engaging and informative presentation on Artificial Intelligence. An abundance of information was presented detailing the advantages of the perils of AI. Doug had a great knowledge and understanding of AI that he passed on to the audience. It was an excellent presentation!
Travel Memories
Olive Frenette presented a wonderful presentation on Les Iles de la Madeleine. It was a cold day and we were happy that patrons came into the library to join us. Olive is a crowd favourite and is always a pleasure to have!
Blind Date with a Book
Blind Date with a Book (teen edition) at the Dawe Branch was a huge hit, with over 60 books being checked out from the display! Participants were also encouraged to fill out an entry form to “rate their date” and be entered to win a fun prize.
Book Club Spotlight: On the Same Page Book Club
We had a full house for David R. Shlim, MD’s. A Gentle Rain of Compassion. The author shares his experience of living 15 years in Nepal and being a high altitude emergency doctor there. A long-time book club member and her husband shared slides from their 2002 trip to Tibet and Kathmandu. It added beautifully to our discussion and delighted both the well travelled and armchair traveler.
Katja's Latest School Visit!
RDPL Facility Service Dog Katja was invited to visit Father Henri Voisin school as a prize for six Readathon winners to spend some one-on-one time reading to our favourite four-legged reading buddy. We loved spending our morning with the lucky readers and encourage all Red Deer schools to book a visit from Katja!
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