I hope you all are staying warm and dry, and perhaps snuggling up with a good book in what is one of my personal favorite times of year!
As we close out the year and begin another, it’s always nice to reflect on our successes and look forward to even better days ahead. It was a busy holiday season for us at the Library, as we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Main Library (opened December 11, 1950), held fun events for the community in all of our locations, learned cool things about maps, made decorative Christmas vases and diamond art, sent turkeys down ziplines, played retro video games, held a Jane Austen tea party, talked books, and much more! It’s nice to have a little breather before dashing into 2026!
And there’s a lot going on in 2026! First off, we’re going to be partnering with Garrett County Schools, as well as the schools and library of Allegany County, to hold our first-ever Battle of the Books challenge - teams in 6th, 7th and 8th grades will get reading lists and compete in trivia around the books in those lists for the honor of their school (and prizes for themselves, of course!). We’re hoping for a great turnout in the event in March!
Another thing to look forward to is our 2026 Reading Challenge, which invites readers throughout Garrett County to take a Road Trip! You can pick up a log at any of our five locations, and if you complete your Road Trip by reading from categories such as “A book made into a movie” or “A book involving horses” or “About or involving aliens” you can be entered into a grand prize drawing at the end of the year (plus, of course, you get all kinds of great stories all year round)!
As part of the Reading Challenge, you can also work to earn yourself some Classics Buttons for taking on works of great literature, and work towards the elusive Silver Reader and Gold Reader pins! For those of you unfamiliar, there are currently 200 titles marked as Classics - everything from Black Beauty to Infinite Jest - and by reading through any of them you get its corresponding collectible button. We have classics for all ages and all interests - come on by and grab the list. We’re very proud to say we’ve given out over 2000 buttons so far!
The Friendsville Library continues to make progress as well, and we’re looking forward to putting on a grand opening celebration for it early this year - watch this space for a date as completion approaches! It’s really starting to shape up nicely - if you’re in the Friendsville area, swing by and take a look at the project for yourself!
Speaking of Friendsville, I once again have to give a shout-out to the Friendsville Library’s Culinary Connections Cookbook Club! This monthly program/feast is always one of the highlights of the Library’s month - patrons grab cookbooks and bring in samples of what they’ve made based on a theme - the most recent being “Nostalgic Childhood Recipes.” This month, patrons brought in to enjoy things like Creamed Dried Beef Gravy & Biscuits, Unstuffed Cabbage Rolls, Scalloped Potatoes, Spaghetti w/ Meat Sauce, Pineapple Sweet Potatoes, Rice Pudding, Harvest Cake, Halva, Pumpkin Pie, Chocolate Nut Clusters, and Boston Cream Pie.
For the trivia lovers out there, Pub Trivia has returned and is taking place in the Green Room every other Friday through February, as well as once a month at the Mountain Grape Tavern. If there’s any profession that knows trivia, it’s us librarians, so come on by with a team of friends if you want to be challenged!
In this age of mechanization, where real people, art and relationships sometimes feel like they fall through the cracks, where we’re flooded with information you just can’t trust, where so much of what we do is just flitting from one screen to the next, your Library is here for you as an anchor to literature, to good resources, and to caring people - and best of all, in an age in which costs keep rising, we’re still the free public library that already belongs to you. Come on by and see for yourself!
And as always, if you want to get involved in what the Library is up to and help make cool things happen for the community, our Friends of the Library are always looking for new members. The Friends meet the second Wednesday of each month at 5:30 at the Main Library - stop in and meet some great people!