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Allan Appel |
Feb 14, 2025 9:35 am
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Allan Appel Photo
Stetson Branch Librarian Diane Brown (at right) with teen librarian Brooke Jones and children's librarian Phil Modin.
Gary Hogan wants you to know that while the Elks’ light may be temporarily dimmed due to the sale and demolition of their Webster Street building, and while a new club house is in the making further up on Dixwell, they are sponsoring a wide range of new literacy and cultural programs in a partnership with the local Stetson Branch Library.
The New Haven Free Public Library Foundation (NHFPL Foundation) is thrilled to announce the honorees for its highly anticipated Mardi Gras 2025 celebration. The annual event, a cornerstone of the Foundation’s fundraising efforts, will take place on Tuesday, March 4, 2025, at the Ives Main Library in Downtown New Haven (Rain Date: Friday, March 7, 2025).
This year, the NHFPL Foundation will recognize two distinguished individuals whose dedication has significantly impacted the New Haven Free Public Library and the broader community:
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Laura Glesby |
Feb 6, 2025 7:57 pm
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Emani Adams in her favorite part of the library, the Ives Squared "Tinker Lab."
J. Dennis: A resource to the library, just as the library is a resource to him.
At a desk inside the Ives Main Library, Emani Adams unzipped a bag of neon nail polish. She was trying to decide on a color.
Adams and her seven-month-old baby, who soaked in the room with gleaming eyes, had arrived at the New Haven Free Public Library’s main branch downtown at noon on Thursday, as snow mellowed into light rain.
Those days and experiences sparked not only a social justice flame in her but also a career direction: “I became a nurse to learn first aid skills to help people in the revolution,” she recalled.
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Lisa Reisman |
Dec 23, 2024 4:12 pm
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Santana Brightly's “You Have The Power To Determine Who You Are."
A camera, held by a man in a hoodie, dominates a scene of seeming chaos. Two more hands help hold it up. Someone else’s finger rests on the shutter button. Still another hand shifts the lens. Look more closely and virtually everyone in the crowd is shooting pictures.
The piece, “You Have The Power To Determine Who You Are” by Santana Brightly, was among the works spotlighted at the opening of an exhibit on Saturday at Stetson Library. Santana, a seventh-grade student at Hamden’s Sahge Academy, produced the piece while taking part in a month-long graphic arts workshop in AI Art this summer at Stetson.
That mid-century mysterious flying object was the subject of just one of the many queries, curious and quotidian, that have ended up on the desk of New Haven’s Allison Botelho in her 25-year career as the New Haven Free Public Library’s local history librarian.
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Jabez Choi |
Nov 14, 2024 11:40 am
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Lala McClain (right), with Will Tuttle: "This is a beacon of hope for me today."
Kevin DeSilva seemed to experience the impossible — he was in and out of the DMV in under an hour, and he didn’t even have to leave New Haven’s city limits.
De Leon and Holmes: 2 runners at different points in their careers.
Mid-distance runner Farah Santiago De Leon, 12, sat next to world-renowned Olympic athlete Alexis Holmes and looked into the future — imagining the athletic feats that she, too, might one day achieve.
Pengyan Sun and daughter Sophie with (now retired) longtime NHFPL employee Xia Feng, at Tuesday's meetup.
English lessons for Chinese grandparents. Exercise equipment for the elderly. And a library-hosted WeChat channel for Chinese New Haveners looking to connect.
Those recommendations rose to the fore as a dozen people gathered for the city library system’s first ever meeting held entirely in Chinese — to help think through how New Haven’s public library system could improve over the next half decade.
State Librarian Deborah Schander and State Library Digital Inclusion Consultant Christine Gauvreau: Who has access to technology and digital tools and who doesn't?
Downtown library patrons are now able to receive free technology assistance — from connecting to the internet to making doctor’s appointments online to communicating with long-distance family members and friends — from a team of dedicated “digital navigators.”
Expanded STEM resources, earlier opening hours, and better advertising of library services were on the minds of nearly a dozen library patrons asked to envision how the city’s national award-winning public library system could improve over the next five years.
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Allan Appel |
Sep 20, 2024 10:40 am
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Allan Appel Photos
Library lovers Dave Caron and Mary Newell at Thursday's planning session ...
... with City Librarian Maria Bernhey and Deputy Director Luis Chavez-Brumell.
Library leaders and patrons gathered on Grand Avenue to think through how to keep the city’s public libraries among the most welcoming, friendly, helpful, diverse places in town — as part of a planning process designed to make them even more effective at serving the New Haven community a half decade from now.
DSS's Ann Rodriguez and Christine Stuart: "I'm a shaker now."
George Prendergast was sitting in the Downtown Ives Main Library when he heard an announcement over the intercom: there would be a presentation on EBT theft on the lower level of the library.
Prendergast’s no stranger to the topic — he’s been a victim of identity theft four times, and now he changes his passwords every two weeks. He made his way downstairs.
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Asher Joseph |
Jul 15, 2024 8:41 am
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asher joseph photos
Wilson Children's Librarian Michelle Ziogas: "I hope they come home from kindergarten and ask, ‘Can we go to the library?’”
“And that’s Michelle,” said Wilson Library Branch Manager Meghan Currey. “As you can see, she’s shaking out her sillies.”
Surrounded by six moms and their toddlers, Michelle Ziogas opened the Wilson Library’s weekly “Stay and Play” in-person storytime in the same way she has since starting last July as the branch’s first children’s librarian in years.
That is, by singing along to a song, this week’s selection being “Shake My Sillies Out” by children’s artist Raffi.
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Jennifer Gargiulo |
May 10, 2024 12:56 pm
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Contributed photo
Jennifer Gargiulo.
This round-up of books recently acquired by the city’s public library was submitted by Jennifer Gargiulo, manager of Ives Squared at the Ives Main Library.
I am lucky to work in a unique space within the library, where all of our books are purchased for a niche collection. I am also lucky to have a staff who make careful selections of titles that meet the needs of a diverse population of creatives and entrepreneurs. One of the new books in Ives Squared came to us through a grant from the Elizabethan Club at Yale, and it caught my eye — specifically because as a new mom, and a middle manager, I often find myself trying to prove that I can do it all.
The following book review and roundup of recent public library title acquisitions were written by Rory Martorana, public services administrator for Communications & Marketing, Adult Services at the New Haven Free Public Library:
This month, NHFPL Young Minds Supervisor Soma Mitra discusses the library’s Early Literacy Backpacks, along with new book additions.
One of the newer additions to the children’s collection at Ives branch I am excited to mention is the Library’s Early Literacy Backpacks. These backpacks have high-quality early learning materials, books, and activity guides that make learning fun and interesting! All materials are developmentally appropriate for young children. The activity tip sheets provide easy-to-follow instructions, while promoting positive parent-child interactions through conversations.
A student gifts a book to the Little Free Library.
“Sometimes when you talk, the universe listens.”
That’s what Chris Walker, manager of the new LaundroMax on Whalley Avenue, said to me as we watched 25 kids sit still between rows of gleaming washing machines and a cacophony of dryers tumbling and buzzers going off — and prepare to hear a story read aloud at New Haven’s most innovative new branch library.
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Chris Volpe |
Feb 21, 2024 11:52 am
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Timmy Maia performs at the ball.
Chris Volpe Photos
Cindy Schofield and Jozzi Pizzolato dance up a storm.
Two hundred revelers helped the New Haven Free Public Library Foundation raise $50,000 Tuesday night at the annual Mardi Gras fundraising bash at the Elm Street main branch.
Happy Black History Month! The New Haven Free Public Library is celebrating Black entrepreneurship during the month of February. Black history happens every day, but it is important to celebrate Black entrepreneurship and how it has impacted American history. A perfect example of this is the life of Frederick Douglass who is known as a celebrated abolitionist, writer, orator, and statesman but also was indeed an entrepreneur.
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Diane Brown, Stetson Branch Manager |
Jan 8, 2024 2:36 pm
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Books newly acquired by the NHFPL in January.
One of the latest additions to the Stetson Branch Library collection is African American author Tracy K. Smith’s Pulitzer Prize-Winning book, To Free The Captives: A Plea For The American Soul. This story is a personal account of memory, family, and history. Smith takes us on a journey through her patrilineal family to gain an understanding of the lives they lived, the challenges they faced and how they managed to have hope despite the trauma they endured at the hands of racism.
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Lisa Reisman |
Jan 2, 2024 1:37 pm
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Winter Wonderland celebration in full swing.
There were toys, every kind of toy, over 2,000 in all. There were remote-control cars and action figures and explorer kits and puzzles and Legos and Slime and board games and magnetic building blocks and light boxes and glow-in-the-dark basketballs and crystal balls, as well as dolls of every age, model, and style.
Young partygoer amid snowflakes.
Under the brights lights of the Dixwell Community‑Q House gymnasium at the first annual Winter Wonderland Celebration toy giveaway on the Saturday before Christmas, there was music booming and people dancing and kids tearing around the hardwood floors, and snow swirling from a snow machine, and cotton candy, and Santa and Mrs. Claus perched on a sleigh for photo-ops.
One of the newest additions to the Mitchell Branch library’s shelves is The Reformatory by Tananarive Due. I was never truly a horror fan, but the storytelling is so rich that I became a fan of this author over twenty years ago through her African Immortals Series.
