Nuestra Feria de Lectura!

Our stand in Tarabuco

So, the last couple of weeks have been pretty slow in the library in Tarabuco, in terms of library users, but we´ve had a “Feria de Lectura” and an attempt at taking an inventory of all the books (we got through about an eighth) to keep us busy!

So on Sunday (1st) I got up at five to meet at the Tarabuco bus stop at seven, as we had an event to run in Tarabuco that morning. The “Feria de Lectura” was originally planned as a multiple-stand event, with the three schools in Tarabuco coming along, which would´ve allowed us to promote the library to hundreds of kids. What we actually got was a stand at the annual gastronomy/textile/agricultural fair. This led to a few challenges: inadequate space to properly set out the activities; lack of children present (most of them were helping their parents to sell stuff); and a general feeling that we were out of place, being probably the only stand not selling things.

However, that´s not to say it was a failure; our stand was pretty much constantly full and some of the children who came by had not previously been aware of the library. Karen set up the parachute-y thing, which was popular with the kids and definitely helped with visibility! All in all it was a good day but not as successful as we would´ve liked, due to the change of plans.

The following Wednesday, Roxana (one of the permanent Biblioworks people) and I went out to Tarabuco to try and get an inventory done. A group of people did something similar in Pampa Aceituno a few weeks ago, and it worked really well, so we were trying to emulate that, and get all of the books sorted, numbered and inventoried.

We got through about half of literature.

However, I can easily get through what´s left on my own, and half of literature is still pretty good. This got me thinking about how under-used the literature section is in the library – most kids just come in to do their homework, and tend to restrict themselves to textbooks. It´s a shame, because we have hundreds of fiction books (many of them copies of the same title, but there´s still plenty there) and a good deal of children´s books too. Flora (the librarian) and I have been trying to think of ways to promote these books – we are thinking of something like a reading competition. However, I have only about five weeks to go and it feels like a very short time!

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