After a stint at the Fort Frances Museum, Samantha Manty has returned to the children’s department at the Fort Frances Public Library Technology Centre (FFPLTC).
It’s been almost a month since Manty returned following the departure of Brittany Renaud who resigned in the spring.
Manty, who was in the position for about five years before taking on a role at the museum as Programming and Events Coordinator, says she’s happy to be back at the library.
“It’s been absolutely wonderful, to be honest,” she said. “It feels great to be back around the families and the kids and all of the patrons and just being part of the library team again. Everything has been wonderful.”
When working with children, there’s often significant growth over a short period of time and Manty says she’s seen many of the children she interacted with before have grown since she saw them last.
“It feels really great to have little ones who I did baby time or story time with running into the library excited to see me,” she said. “One of my favourite things so far is that a little one that had done both baby time and story time with is now doing some reading of their own and the parent has shared that with me. It’s really gratifying to see these little ones grow up and still enjoy reading.”
FFPLTC CEO Richard Bee says that having Manty back at the library has been positive.
“It’s been tremendous, Sam is a really positive influence in the library here,” Bee said. “She’s a boundless amount of positive energy. There’ve been lots of happy faces, I think, seeing her back here too.”
With her return Manty is working to stabilize weekly programs like Baby Time and Story Time.
“We’re working on getting back into Story Time and Baby Time,” she said. “Those would be kind of two big ones that we’re working on right now. So we have run a few story time sessions with different summer themes. Tons of fun with silly stories and silly songs geared towards that kind of two to six age range, but obviously anyone is welcome to attend. We try to keep the stories kind of a bit shorter so the kids can get those learning and listening skills and have some fun with reading. So that’s been great. We are now looking at kind of relaunching Baby Time. We did take a few weeks break, but we’re really excited to get that up and going next week. We made a new Baby Time booklet that kind of incorporates some of the songs that I have done in the past, and also incorporating some that Miss Brittany had done too, bringing the two worlds together to bring something great to the community.”
Another initiative for young children is 1,000 books before kindergarten in which parents are encouraged to read their child(ren) 1,000 books before they get to kindergarten. Manty also wants to see caregivers and parents come to the library to meet up with others in the same position as well as learn more about getting young kids reading.
“I’m really encouraging families and parents and caregivers that this is a good space to meet people, meet different parents, get information about books, encouragement, whatever else,” she said.
In her return to the library the position has also grown, she’s now in charge of youth services as well.
“Before it was Children’s Services and now it’s Children and Youth Services,” she said. “So it’s kind of like there’s this whole new bubble and demographic that I get to try to connect with and find ways of bringing them in.”
Manty says she hopes to have a bit more teen directed programming at the library coming this fall.
“We are trying to look at doing some workshops for teens hopefully,” she said. “Something that I’m really hoping to do in the fall is reach out to teens or parents and caregivers of teens and find out more about what they would like to see in the library and we can do to make it a welcoming space for them and provide programming that they might enjoy.”
One of the programs she highlighted for older kids is the Lego Club the library hosts. While it’s often free time just to build with the Lego the library has on hand, Manty is considering adding a challenge to it.
“So starting next week, I’m going to try to post a weekly challenge online so people know ahead of time what they might be doing,” she said. “So next week, we’re trying to do balloon powered Lego cars. They’re kind of fun because you have to tweak them a little bit to figure out what works. So there’s a little bit of science in there, and we’re going to give people a chance to test them and try them and maybe see how far the different ones can go. Maybe have a little prize, just for encouragement. So I’m excited to kind of work with the Lego club.”
Overall Manty is happy to be back in the position she was in for the last five years.
“While being here, I really loved and appreciated the job. Being away and coming back just makes you appreciate everything even more. My favourite part is really just helping encourage kids to get excited about the library and get them encouraged, even reluctant readers, to find something that they like, or, seeing babies’ milestones as they’re starting to grow up. Like there’s so many treasures in this job, and I just really value all of them, and I’m just really happy to be able to use my skills and my personality to just bring a sense of community to the library and the children’s department and with tweens and teens and getting people excited about literacy, reading, songs and all the other different things that we have here, because this library is amazing with so many other resources as well.”
