Grayslake Library Blog

  America’s Independence Day is right around the corner. It is a time of celebration for many in the U.S., with grand fireworks displays and tasty backyard cookouts. While you’re celebrating this year, it might be fun to have some facts about the holiday to bring up in conversation. Here are just a few bits of trivia about this holiday: Fireworks have been a 4th of July tradition since the very beginning, being fired during the first organized celebration in Philadelphia in 1777. July 4th is the biggest hot dog holiday in the United States. According to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, Americans consume around 150 million hot dogs on Independence Day. John Calvin Coolidge was born on July 4, 1872, in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. He was the only U.S. president to be born on Independence Day. Conversely, there have been two presidential deaths on July 4: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the 50th observance of Independence Day in 1826, within hours of each other. Alongside...

The Grayslake Area Public Library and the Board of Trustees are very appreciative of our most recent partnership with Community Consolidated School District 46’s Board of Education, the Grayslake Heritage Center and Museum, and members of the community who participated in the Juneteenth Celebration of Freedom. The event was educational, uplifting, and unifying for our whole community. The defacing of the collaborative Juneteenth Community Flag that was partially colored by attendees on the day of the event and then made available for members of the community to complete in the library is extremely unsettling. This action does not represent our library values , and the Grayslake Area Public Library and the Board of Trustees strongly denounce this act. We will not let this one incident overshadow what was an incredible and inspiring event for many in our community. We will continue to be a library that values a culture of inclusivity and mutual respect. Community Consolidated School Dist...

  Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, is an annual observance of June 19, 1865. On this day, Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce that all enslaved persons in the southern states were freed two and half years ago by the Emancipation Proclamation. The fact that it took this long for news to reach the South is indicative of the complex and oppressive nature of slavery. Nonetheless, June 19 soon became a day of celebration in Texas, and as the years went on, the rest of the United States joined in the jubilation. It has become a nationwide opportunity to honor African American heritage and freedom and was finally made a federal holiday by President Biden in 2021. Commemorate Juneteenth with us! Listed below are a number of reading recommendations for children, teens, and adults that teach you more about Juneteenth and the experiences of African Americans as a whole. Check out Hoopla’s Juneteenth Collection with your Grayslake li...

  Why The Change? We regularly evaluate how best to utilize the limited dollars we have to spend on all our materials and services, including our digital offerings, to maintain operational efficiencies and provide you with a wide range of titles and formats. After much consideration, it was concluded: Continuing to pay subscription fees to multiple platforms is not a sustainable or efficient use of tax dollars, and redirecting the cloudLibrary funds into Libby and Hoopla will enhance our digital reading and entertainment collection offerings.   Did You Know?  The number of patrons using cloudLibrary is minimal compared to those using Libby and Hoopla. Each provider of digital materials charges us an annual subscription fee in addition to the cost of each title we purchase.  EBooks and audiobooks cost more than physical books, and we must pay for each digital copy.  How Will You Benefit? The money previously used for the cloudLibrary subscription will now b...