Rotary Club hears from Southwest Georgia Regional Library

Published 10:45 am Wednesday, October 27, 2021

The Bainbridge Rotary Club met for their regularly scheduled weekly meeting on Tuesday, with the guest speaker of the day being Beth Jones, marketing and programming librarian for Southwest Georgia Regional Library. Jones spoke on the various programs offered and initiatives that will be offered by the library going forward.

“Our big thing is e-books and audiobooks,” she said. “Once COVID happened, and we realized, ‘Oh my goodness, we have to shut our doors,’ there was a big push to still provide resources to everyone in the community through our e-book and audio book collection.”

According to Jones, this led to an increase of up to 73,000 titles added to the collection.

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The library also acquired grant funds that have allowed them to purchase Chromebooks and WiFi hotspots.

“The one thing we found out during COVID is students in Bainbridge High School, they have Chromebooks to be able to do their virtual classes, but there were a lot of students that didn’t have access to the internet from home,” Jones said. “These hotspots will be available for students to be able to work from home.”

Jones also discussed various apps offered by the library for e-books, including Libby, hoopla and the eRead Kids Digital Library (all of which have differing terms and restrictions), before discussing upcoming virtual programs, such as Virtual Story time and bedtime stories for kids, as well as “Messages from Santa” for Christmas.

Other projects include “WW2 Oral Histories,” a series of videos available on the Digital Library of Georgia; records of Bainbridge Army Airfield, available on the Digital Library of Georgia; home access to ancestry.com with a library card; digitized newspaper archives; a genealogy room, cemetery index and yearbooks available at the library; and according to Jones, a funeral index is currently in the works.

For more information on these and other programs, call the Decatur County-Gilbert H. Gragg Library at 229-248-2665.