Recently there was a conversation on MASSYAC (the list serve for children’s librarians in Massachusetts) about movie nights and why it’s hard to attract patrons to movies at the library.\u00c2\u00a0 The whole conversation totally puzzled me, since it was the exact opposite of what I experience at the library I work for.\u00c2\u00a0 Other librarians complained that they would hold a movie night and no one would come, or only a few people would come, or that attendance would be spotty and irregular from one movie to another.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it’s simply the geographic makeup of the town in which I work, but movie nights are a consistent hit for us.\u00c2\u00a0 This town has no movie theater,\u00c2\u00a0and is quite a drive from movie theaters in other towns.\u00c2\u00a0 So the weekly, sometimes bi-weekly, movie nights that we have planned for this summer are a terrific way for families in town to socialize with each other, and now that we have reliable air conditioning, it will also be a great way to beat the heat in the midst of summer.<\/p>\n
And the fact that\u00c2\u00a0Mary, Lisa, Roy, and I\u00c2\u00a0are willing to work an evening shift in order to run movie nights, even Friday evenings in the school year, must count for something too.\u00c2\u00a0 Though I do want to instigate gentle afternoon movie showings in the children’s room for the coming school year, I also feel quite strongly that it’s necessary to hold movie nights<\/em>, events that working parents can happily and easily attend with their children.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n All these reasons aside, our first movie night in the new building was an unqualified success, with an almost full house of attendees (a full house is 89, we had 74).\u00c2\u00a0 The movie was Flushed Away<\/em>, a movie that Jim and I had rented a few months ago to watch at home.\u00c2\u00a0 Truthfully, I didn’t enjoy it much when Jim and I\u00c2\u00a0watched it, but I still put it on the summer\u00c2\u00a0schedule because the demand for our circulating DVD has been high at the library.\u00c2\u00a0 And I was\u00c2\u00a0pleasantly surprised by Flushed Away <\/em>when I saw it on the library’s big screen, with a crowd of happy, rowdy (in a good way) children in attendance.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a LOT of fun, and the crowd gave a heartfelt round of applause at the conclusion.<\/p>\n Next week’s movie is Shrek<\/em> (might as well show the first of the trilogy, the one that started it all!), and I’ll be going out today to buy some more of the incredibly popular popcorn that we served at this week’s movie.\u00c2\u00a0 Which might be another key to our success:\u00c2\u00a0 good popcorn.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently there was a conversation on MASSYAC (the list serve for children’s librarians in Massachusetts) about movie nights and why it’s hard to attract patrons to movies at the library.\u00c2\u00a0 The whole conversation totally puzzled me, since it was the exact opposite of what I experience at the library I work for.\u00c2\u00a0 Other librarians complained … Continue reading Flushed Away<\/span>