The Hagaman Memorial Library brings many new events to the East Haven Community in hopes of bringing everyone together. There has been a huge difference in libraries over the years and community service librarian Cynthia Gwiazda said libraries have become more of a “community center.”
The past few years have been full of events at the library and even just the past few months have been very event filled. In May the library will be holding a Mother’s Day event that has quickly been filled up by people of the East Haven community. Soon after that there will be a concert. On Saturday May 25th at two p.m. there will be a Memorial Day concert. The concert will be performed by Tom Callinan who was Connecticut’s first troubadour. His songs are described as unique by Cynthia and she even explained what his songs pertain to, “He’s going to perform songs from the Civil War period, like rallying songs from both the Union and Confederate perspective.” This is perfect for the remembrance of Memorial Day because of the fact that these songs are made to remember the military and give more insight on the people of the military.
The library is hosting a lot of social events. The library received a grant from Connecticut State Library Summer Enrichment. This grant is going to help pay for a gaming program for elementary through high school students. This program will allow for students to have a summer program to have an educational and fun program for the summer months. Although, this is not the only grant that the library has received. They received a ten thousand dollar grant through the network of the National Library of Medicine. They will use this grant to build a mobile computer lab. This computer lab will be mobile which means it can be moved rather than be stationary in one place.
The library uses their social media as their main source of publicity. The library has people who make their social media posts and keep up with their google business page. The events brochure for June, July, and August will be coming out soon as should be available on the Hagaman social media and website. This brochure will give information on the upcoming events for the library.
There is a common misconception that libraries are only for books. Although this may have been true in the past, this is not the case in the present day. Libraries have become very digital and allow for people to rent movies, use computers, and many other things. Many people do not know about this and libraries find it hard to change people’s minds. Cynthia said “I think it’s been hard for libraries in general to kind of get people’s mindset to change about that. We really are more like community centers now than we ever were before.” Libraries have been evolving for years, and Cynthia says in her 20+ years of experience in the library she has seen this change for herself.
The library is hoping that by doing programs and planning events that this will bring the community together. There are so many opportunities to get together and do fun things.
