We’re dedicated to keeping Sarasota County Libraries on the leading edge of technology and community services.
Investing in Our Libraries
As part of our mission, the Library Foundation has undertaken several campaigns and projects to supplement our libraries’ offerings. Below are just a few of the ways we’ve helped expand our libraries’ services over the years.
Pop-Up Library
The Library Foundation granted $125,000 to Sarasota County’s public library system to fund a fully-equipped mobile Pop-Up library.
This customized outreach vehicle will be the first of its kind in Sarasota County, bringing the library’s technology, books, and programs to communities with limited access to library resources.
Help us continue to broaden the reach of the library system and guarantee more resources for all in the community.
Staffed with a full-time librarian and outreach specialist, the Pop-Up library will also provide:
Mobile Wi-Fi
STEM-based makerspaces
Employment services
Programming for children, families, and senior citizens
Digital Resources Campaign
Now more than ever, digital resources for the library, such as eBooks, online databases, audio books and internet access, are critical for keeping our community connected.
In 2018, the Library Foundation presented county commissioners with a check for $212,000 donated by library lovers for new digital resources. This gift added 8,600 e-resources to the online collection, a 36% increase.
Additional digital materials will reduce patron wait times and will help our library resources remain accessible even when the library building is closed. Yet digital materials are often 4 – 5 times more expensive than print materials, and often have to be re-purchased after a limited number of uses.
Join us today in expanding our libraries’ digital resources to help ensure our community stays informed, educated and connected.
Creation Stations
Creation Station visitors can learn how to program a robot, design and build products on the 3-D printer, digitize old family photos, learn how to code, sew with a grandparent, create materials to start a small business, launch a podcast … and anything else their creative minds can imagine.
Designed to promote hands-on learning, Creation Stations are dedicated “makerspaces” in Sarasota County libraries where children, teens and adults come together to imagine, design and create with the help of a knowledgeable library staff member.
In 2017, we opened Creation Stations at the Selby Library and the Shannon Staub Library – and they were overwhelmingly successful. In partnership with the Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation, which in 2018 provided the extraordinarily generous lead grant, and thanks to many committed Library Foundation donors, the Creation Stations were expanded to 10 library locations.
This transformative initiative will help Sarasota County libraries attract new users, support non-traditional learners and open the doors to new ways of thinking and potential new career opportunities.
This Creation Station expansion is truly a game-changer for our community.
If you’d like to inspire creativity, innovation and a love of technology for all generations in our libraries, join us today with a gift to help fund our Creation Stations.
Creation Stations In Action
Children can design digital art at Creation Stations.
A 3-D printed robot printed at a Creation Station!
Open Lab in the Creation Station.
Playing with stop motion filming.
Paper quilting at a Creation Station.
A sewing class at a Creation Station.
A young person looking for a 3D print design.
Creation stations offer Osmo, an award-winning educational game system for kids.
The Children’s Literacy Endowment
Research conducted by the National Council for Family Literacy shows two primary indicators for the development of strong early literacy skills and later success in reading and learning in school:
The availability of reading materials in the home.
How often a parent or caregiver reads to a child.
To support parents as their child’s first teacher, and to ensure our most at-risk children have access to books in their home, the Library Foundation has partnered with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, a book-gifting program that mails free books to children from birth to age 5.
These books are selected by early literacy experts and are new, age appropriate and diverse. Each child under age 5 in a household can participate, and best of all, the books stay with the child forever and are often the beginning of a child’s very own home library.
Gifts to the Library Foundation support local children’s participation in the Imagination Library. Help us raise a generation of readers. Support early literacy with a gift today.
AWE Early Literacy Stations
Young children are surrounded by technology — in their community, in early childhood education programs — but not always in their homes. The most vulnerable members of our community still experience the “digital divide,” which puts children at a disadvantage. For children to be successful in school now, they need to be familiar with computers and technology.
The AWE Early Literacy Stations are all-in-one learning stations for young children. They feature a colorful keyboard and engage the young learner with a touchscreen and kid-sized mouse. Each unit is equipped with 54 educational software programs covering seven curriculum areas including reading, math, music, science and art.
Using the AWE stations, preschoolers use computers to create art, make music, tell and record stories, hear their stories read back to them and engage with educational games that connect with off-screen learning and playtime. Programs are offered in English and Spanish.
The Sarasota County Libraries currently provide AWE Early Literacy Stations at nine libraries, for children ages 2-10 years. Programs are offered in English and Spanish, and each week, over 1,000 learning sessions are supported. Parents for whom English is a second language, or those who are challenged with basic literacy competency can also learn new skills as they join their children.
Join us in maintaining access to AWE stations for the children
who visit our Sarasota County Libraries by making a gift today.
AWE Stations In Action
A young boy in his mom utilize an AWE Early Literacy Station together at the library.
Want to See Our Impact in Action?
Check out our photos and head over to your local Sarasota County library!
To find a library near you, click here.
