Growing Up in a Digital World

By Amber Covington  Rowan Public Library

Parents across the world are faced with societies changing quickly. Childhood is impacted every moment with outside factors such as television, internet, music, news, and many other ways children can be influenced. In our digital society, it is key for parents to be aware of the various ways children can be influenced with or without their consent.

Today, we use digital resources for almost everything. We have began to consult and store information digitally at an exponential rate. Do you still have a book of family recipes or have your stored grandma’s secret recipe on a hard drive as an image file? Have you had your retail receipts texted or emailed to you for backup references? Of course, most people are using online banking to keep track of automatic drafts and online payments. For adults, using digital resources can be a lifesaver when a paper copy is lost and it has no doubt saved an enormous amount of time and paper. Youth are quick at learning digital devices and the various ways they are introduced to technology is important. As a parent it is necessary to teach your child how to be responsible online and find reputable resources that can be trusted. One way to help ensure they are being safe is to teach them to ask permission to use the computer, discuss the dangers of giving out personal information online, and guarding their privacy online by not posting pictures of themselves on social media. To get more information about being responsible and safe online, the website Common Sense Media is dedicated to educating parents, families, and schools. They have monthly newsletters, blogs, and pages filled with suggestions for age appropriate movies and books, ways to share and discuss topics in the news, and how to practice online safety.

Today, most of our information is being digitally harvested from websites and preserved archivally. It is crucial for parents to be involved in how their child’s life is shared online from birth. Years of data can be saved, digitally altered, and shared without your permission. Parents actually are the first to create an online presence for a child. Posting images on Facebook or Instagram is quite common and an infant cannot control a social media account. Be aware, how you use technology can influence how your child will use it when they are old enough. For more tips and resources to keep your child safe online and ways to discuss current information in the media, please visit www.commonsensemedia.org. And as always, stop by the Rowan Public Library and check out a few books.

RPL West Branch, a center for learning & community

by Laurie Lyda Rowan Public Library

For those who call the townships in West Rowan County home, the West Branch Library will bring the resources and materials that currently require a 10-12 mile (on average) drive much closer.  Cleveland, Mt. Ulla, and Woodleaf alone make up approximately 4,500 of the library card holders in RPL’s system.

Rowan County’s Board of Commissioners approved the West Branch proposal in early 2018, and the site for the building was then secured. Serendipitously, Cleveland Elementary School’s upcoming move leaves the current school media center and auditorium vacant. These buildings, when renovated, will be the home of West Branch Library.  The park will also be part of the Library’s grounds.

For RPL administration, anchoring West Branch in the West Rowan community has been a priority since the earliest iterations of the proposal. This remains true as the project moves forward: West Branch will be a center for learning and community.

West Branch’s physical collections—including books, audiobooks, DVDs, and periodicals—will be housed in the soon-to-be renovated school media center. The open floor plan allows for economical modifications so that the final product will meet the needs of West patrons, allowing space for quiet study, internet use, browsing collections, and similar activities.

West Branch will offer free broadband internet to the community. RPL patrons can use their library card number and PIN to log onto the system; guest users can purchase a guest pass during business hours. Wireless internet access will be available on the Library’s grounds 24 hours a day, seven days a week. At a time when internet is a crucial resource in our everyday lives for everything from banking to job-searching to personal correspondence, this service is a necessity for West Rowan residents.

The rural setting of West Rowan can make securing meeting spaces difficult. Plans for West Branch include the auditorium’s conversion into three separate but flexible meeting spaces: two small rooms and one large (200 capacity). There will also be a catering kitchen.  Unlike other RPL branches’ meeting spaces, West Branch will open its reservations to both public and private events.

West Branch’s proximity to the new West Rowan Elementary School will allow for new collaborations to provide quality programs, resources, and assistance to school groups, clubs, and parent-teacher organizations. Current collaborations between RPL and Rowan-Salisbury Schools include the Rowan One Card, Summer Reading outreach, Books-n-Bites Summer Outreach, and the annual Stories by the Millstream Storytelling Festival for second graders.

West Branch will be open over 30 hours a week, Mondays-Thursdays and Saturdays. The RPL system looks forward to better serving the communities of West Rowan and is excited that West Branch Library will become part of the neighborhood very soon. In the meantime, contributions to the West Branch Library Campaign are being accepted. It takes a community to make a library, and each gift – of any amount – is appreciated. Gifts can be designated; opportunities for giving include computer lab furnishings, meeting room furnishings, general furnishings, children’s book and materials collection, and the West Branch endowment.

Unless requested otherwise, all gifts will be publicly recognized in RPL’s monthly newsletter; amounts are not included. Contributions of $500 and above will be publicly recognized on a donor wall, located in West Branch’s main entry. For questions about the West Branch Library Campaign or the gift-giving process, call 704-216-8240.

Give Yourself a Summer Reading Challenge

by Jenny Hubbard Rowan Public Library

            You may have heard about Great American Reads, the PBS-sponsored challenge to pin down America’s favorite book, which will be announced in November of this year.  We of Book Bites, the reading club of Rowan Public Library, have chosen this opportunity to revisit, over the summer, three classic novels from our childhoods: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Little House on the Prairie, and Little Women.

            All three of these semi-autobiographical stories feature spirited girls.  Our June book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, introduces us to 1912 tenement living and Francie Nolan, age 11, a poor Catholic girl with big dreams. Coming of age in the shadow of her alcoholic father and over-burdened mother, Francie clings to education as a way out of a vicious cycle, though she loves her neighborhood and her family with a fierce and abiding love.  Many of today’s fiction writers cite Betty Smith’s 1943 book as inspiration, and I for one am delighted that it found its way on the PBS list.

            For July, in the spirit of independence, we Book Biters wave our flag for a book that’s not on that list but should be:  Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  If you donned a calico bonnet for the bus ride to school and carried your lunch in a tin pail, your geeky enthusiasm will be validated as soon as you reread Little House. Nearly 100 years old now, Ingalls’s books for children stand up brilliantly to the test of time.  And if you can’t get enough of them, follow up with this adult companion piece, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the recent Pulitzer-Prize winner by Caroline Fraser. It’s riveting.     

In August, Book Bites moves from little houses to Little Women. I suppose we could slide into the dog days and watch the new and highly acclaimed PBS adaptation instead, but reading the actual words by Louisa May Alcott will afford us the opportunity to measure our skills as literary critics.  As a girl, I adored Jo March, Alcott’s alter ego, but I fear that I will now view the whole book as less than perfection. Will I be the only one who finds  it overly sentimental? Are Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy fully-rounded characters or stereotypes?  When the novel was published in 1869, was it a cry for women’s rights, or did it merely affirm the patriarchal order? 

I look forward to answering these questions with the other members of Book Bites. Come and return to your youth with us: we welcome you with open books and open arms. We will likely continue in the autumn to pull from Great American Reads, though rest assured we will not choose Shades of Grey, one of the 100 on list.  If it wins that big prize in November, my English-teacher heart will surely die a tiny death.

Book Bites, free and open to all, meets the last Tuesday of the month from 6-7 pm at Frank T. Tadlock South Rowan Regional, 920 Kimball Road, in China Grove. Call 704.216.7727 for more information.

Rowan Public Library now offers in-library eBook experience

by Edward Hirst  Rowan Public Library

Rowan Public Library has expanded its digital services with the introduction of the OverDrive Media Station, an in-library discovery tool that allows visitors to browse and sample the library’s digital collection of eBooks, audiobooks, and video from an interactive touchscreen monitor. Library patrons can send any title they discover using OverDrive Media Station to their favorite device for checkout using a QR code, email, or SMS text message.

In addition to the new in-library OverDrive Media Station, digital titles are available anytime, anywhere by visiting http://ncdigital.lib.overdrive.com. Users may browse the library’s website, borrow titles with a valid library card, and enjoy their selections on all major computers and devices, including iPhone®, iPad®, Nook®, Android™ phones and tablets, and Kindle®. eBooks can be read immediately on any device with an internet browser and all titles will automatically expire at the end of the lending period.

Experience the interactive OverDrive Media Station at all branches of Rowan Public Library and browse the library’s digital collection anytime at http://ncdigital.lib.overdrive.com.

With thousands of popular titles to choose from, North Carolina Digital Library  is guaranteed to have something for everyone. You can enjoy best-sellers and classic literature, stories for kids and teens, full-length feature films and much more anytime, anywhere.