President’s Day is celebrated during the month of February. The other part of the newspaper exhibit is dedicated to biographies about some of the lesser known presidents of the United States as well as the current president, Barack Obama.
To learn more about the presidents, visit the White House’s Presidents website.
Every year during the month of February, we celebrate Black History Month. This year’s theme is Black Women in American Culture and History. On the bulletin board exhibit, we have books about famous African American women as well as famous African American men and some overview books.
To learn more about Black History, visit the Library of Congress’ African American History Month website.
The Carolina Games Summit will be held at Wayne Community College on Saturday, February 4 starting at 10:00 a.m. Part of the newspaper exhibit area has books that cover many areas of game development as well as the history of video games and information on vintage games.
To learn more about the Carolina Games Summit, visit the website.
January is also a great month to celebrate books that have been made into movies. The Erwin Library’s bulletin board exhibit area features some of the past, present and future movies that were books first.
To learn more about current and upcoming movie releases that started as books, visit the Earlyword website.
Welcome to the year 2012! This year starts a brand new year of books exhibits at the Erwin Library. To begin the year, we will be celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. on the newspaper exhibit area. Included on the display are children’s books about MLK Jr. and the causes he supported plus a few books that Martin Luther King, Jr. authored.
To find out more about Martin Luther King, Jr., visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute.
Each year December is the focus of our transition from one year to the next. It also marks a holiday season for people all over the world, beginning with Hanukkah, observed from December 20 through December 28, followed by Christmas on December 25. This joyous time is wrapped up neatly by Kwanzaa, which begins on December 26 and ends on January 1, bringing us into the new year.
The Erwin Library’s exhibit areas highlight all these holidays. In the bulletin board area are Christmas books for children, as well as a few fiction titles for older readers, and, in th newspaper area books about Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, as well as more books about Christmas, Winter and that thing that most of either love or hate … snow.
On Christmas Eve, you may wish to visit the NORAD site to track Santa’s whereabouts. At the Jewish Outreach Institute webiste you can learn more about Hanukkah and its traditions. Lastly, you may want to consult the CNN website to learn about Kwanzaa.
At the end of November is a holiday that is usually overlooked. Thanksgiving commemorates the feast held in 1621 by settlers of the new Plymouth colony, now part of present day Massachusetts, who were were very thankful for a great harvest (hence the name Thanksgiving). To celebrate Thanksgiving, the WCC Library newspaper exhibit area offers a collection of children’s books, history books and cookbooks about this holiday.
To learn more about Thanksgiving and the Pilgrim settlers who voyaged to their new home on the Mayflower, visit the General Society of Mayflower Descendants website. An interesting part of the site is a listing of notable descendants.
November is Native American Heritage Month. This month long celebration started in 1990 when George H. W. Bush approved a joint resolution designating November 1990 “National American Indian Heritage Month.”
Currently, the WCC Library bulletin board exhibit area, and part of the newspaper exhibit area, showcases Native Americans and their contributions to our culture and history. The bulletin board area offers biographies of prominent Native Americans, as well as a few general information books. The newspaper area provides fiction books for adults and children by Native American authors. All are availble for you to check out and read.
For more information about Native Americans and their heritage, visit the Library of Congress website. Take a look at some of the image collections and exhibitions that the Library of Congress offers on this site.
Teen Read Week occurs every October. This year’s Teen Read Week is October 16-22, with the theme Picture It @ Your Library. The sponsor of TRW is the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA).
Now in the WCC Library’s newspaper exhibit area are books that celebrate the theme of Teen Read Week, including books about teens who are artists, filmmakers or photographers. Also, there are books about drawing cartoons and manga.
The WCC Library is also highlighting Teens’ Top Ten. Every year, teens across the country are asked to vote for their favorite young adult book of the year. The ten books that get the most votes are then named to the Teens’ Top Ten. Copies of all this year’s Teens’ Top Ten nominees are available in the library’s bulletin board exhibit area for you to check out and read for yourself.
To learn more about teen reading as well as read some classic teen and young adult books, visit the Library of Congress’ teen reading site.
September 24 – October 1 is being observed as Banned Books Week this year. Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to read, and the importance of the First Amendment. It also highlights the benefits of free and open access to information, while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States. The WCC Library’s newspaper exhibit area highlights the books that have been banned over the past year, as well as books that have been banned through history.
A special thanks goes out to Lyndsey Dean, a student at the Wayne Early Middle College High School, who contributed a great deal to the library’s book display, and who is working on her senior project on banned books and censorship.
The American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom has a webpage that discusses banned books and lists the hundreds of books that have been banned over the years. You can search by year or author.