The Library Spotlight

Saratoga Springs Public Library is offering a new tech learning resource - the Tech-Talk newsletter and database. Tech-Talk provides articles, videos, webinars and tips on fresh ways to use technology and communicate. Tech tips on topics of interest include Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), Google G-Suite (Docs, Sheets, Slides), Graphics, Video Creation, Social Media and more. Articles are written for non-techies. New articles and videos are added each week. Click here for more.

Help make history by sharing your story of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just as we relied on information about the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1917-1918 to inform our response to COVID-19, future generations may benefit from understanding what we experienced. By collecting your stories, we become witnesses-to-history, providing insight into daily life during this global pandemic and adding to the historic record.

How can you get involved? Please take some time to fill out this form -- and feel free to share with your friends, family members, and neighbors -- the more people participate, the better understanding we’ll have of the impact of COVID-19. Take the short survey.

Starting October 1, 2020 and ending September 30, 2021, the library is offering our community members the chance to participate in our Read Woke Challenge.

Read Woke, started by Georgia school librarian Cicely Lewis, is an online, self-paced reading challenge designed to encourage people of all ages to read books by and about people who are different from themselves - to experience voices from a variety and diversity of individuals. A Read Woke book is one that:

• Challenges a social norm
• Gives voice to the voiceless
• Provides information about a group that has been disenfranchised
• Seeks to challenge the status quo
• Has a protagonist from an underrepresented or oppressed group

How the challenge works:

1. Sign up through Beanstack
2. Earn virtual badges by reading books in each of the categories, or checking out some of our suggested activities (see suggested titles and events here)
3. Earn 5 badges to be entered in one of our quarterly drawings for a Read Woke t-shirt to proudly declare your committment to reading and learning about a world's worth of different voices

T-shirt drawings will take place in January, April, July, and October of 2021. Anyone who has completed their 5 badges in the three months prior will be entered in that quarter's drawing.