This weekend, my 25th article was published! It’s my 24th @ Your Library Article (formerly Library Detective) article. Back in January, the library changed both the name of the newspaper column and its function: rather than just writing about whatever we want to, each month, where possible, there should be one article on a library collection, one on a service, one on a program or event, and one on a patron’s feedback.
For this article, I decided to write about TBPL‘s partnership with Ohm Base, a local hackerspace which was losing its space. I was actually hanging out with friends who are part of Ohm Base when they were talking about losing their space; this was around the same time that the library was beginning to look for partnerships with local organizations, so the timing ended up perfect for everyone! Over half a year later, the makerspace is open but still a work in progress. Ohm Base ran their first program at the end of April, so now seemed like an excellent time to talk about them for @ Your Library.
Now, typically I’ve been writing @ Your Library articles like an essay, using the structure of “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.” That works really well when talking about books, like I’ve normally been doing. Or when highlighting TBPL Off the Shelf (my 23rd article, which was the first one I wrote when we switched to @ Your Library) and our March Break programs (my 24th article). But for this article, I wanted to do something differently: I wanted to write it as a legitimate newspaper article, complete with quotes from the people who are setting everything up. To my knowledge, this is the first time anyone has done this in the column, so I thought that was really cool (although it’s not the first time I’ve tried something new in the column – I failed to write about it here, but I’m also the first one to publish an article in two parts.)
So if you have a chance, give my “makerspace” article a read (and let me know how well I did, writing it using the newspaper article format!)
An Acquaintance with Letters 