White Sulphur Springs Public Library is proud to announce the opening of its juvenile multimedia collection. Thanks to an extremely generous donation from the Dorothy Louise Kyler Foundation, the library staff has been busily selecting and adding educational DVDs and juvenile/ young adult audiobooks to its circulating collection. While some funds from this donation have also been allocated towards juvenile books, the staff felt it was important to invest in other parts of the library’s juvenile collection. Although some children can absorb a great deal of knowledge from the written word, others are better engaged by audio or visual stimulation. The library staff wished to use our recently-awarded grant moneys to reach this sector of our community’s children and to show how libraries are relevant in the multimedia age.
Our new DVDs cover a wide range of subjects including math, science, and social studies. There are DVDs that introduce children to literature, art, and music, such as The Elephant’s Child, narrated by Jack Nicholson, or Getting to Know Leonardo da Vinci. The collection also includes early education DVDs introducing babies as young as six months to shapes, colors, and words and life skills DVDs addressing as varied a subject matter as bullying, manners, and sharing.
The new audiobooks were selected from recommendation lists and teachers’ suggestions. While many of them are fiction, the library staff hopes to add more classics and nonfiction titles as time and future funds permit. The library staff has added favorites like the Harry Potter series and classics like Charlotte’s Web. There are also young adult audiobooks including The Hunger Games series, Code Name Verity, and FanGirl.
Many of the new items in this juvenile collection have been nominated for or won awards from various organizations. Both DVDs and audiobooks are available to anyone who has a MLN library card and a good library record.