• Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia

• The House of my Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom by Shari Franke

• Wake: the Hidden History of Women-led Slave Revolts by Rebecca Hall

• Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

• The Rulebreaker: the life and times of Barbara Walters by Susan Page

• It’s Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know About Your Reproductive Health (but were never told) by Karen Tang

• The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson

• The Radium Girls: the Dark Story of America’s Shining by Kate Moore

Read a really good book recently that you think other people should read as well? Let us know and we’ll share it in a future newsletter!

Want a personalized recommendation? Fill out the form to let us know what kind of book you’re looking for!

Want to read, watch, or listen to something the library doesn’t own? Let us know and we will consider purchasing it for our collection.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to take in a screening of a documentary called ‘The Librarians’ at the Hamilton Theater, along with 150 patrons, Friends, Board members, and colleagues. The subject of this film was not only the titular librarians, but recent book challenges around the country. Filmmakers revealed how these challenges were not isolated incidents, but an organized attack nationwide on first amendment rights under the guise of protecting children from objectionable material. If you didn’t make it to the screening, you can watch it for free through PBS from now until May 9.

While the subject material of The Librarians was bleak, the discussion that followed was encouraging and optimistic. It’s not very often that a community member asks me directly, “what can I do to help?” My answer then was simple, to use the library. Support of these public institutions through your participation is one of the best things you can do to help, in any community. Of course, that’s only the first step.

Support is showing up, but it’s also voting to approve your local library’s budget initiatives. Ensuring the financial stability of these institutions will help us keep our doors open and lights on. It will stock our shelves with high-quality materials and ensure our ability to host educational and entertaining events. Here at Hamilton, we will have a budget vote through the School District Tax Levy on Tuesday, May 19. I’ll undoubtedly discuss our budget in a future newsletter, but mark your calendars to vote on library funding today!

Another way to support libraries is to take action for funding in the New York State budget! State funding helps public libraries, school libraries, and system libraries in many different ways, and cutting this funding can be detrimental to all of us. The website above will send a form letter in support of library funding to your local State representatives, or if you want to give it a personal touch, feel free to write in whatever you’d like! It only takes a moment of your time and could make a world of difference to your community.

Thank you for reading and supporting the library.

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