Village Green Project Helps Library by Inspiring Young Students
By Jennifer Brannen (Guest Blogger)
Durham County South Regional Library and Durham County are collaborating with EPA on the Village Green Project air monitoring station. A new sort of partnership for all, the Village Green is an air quality project that invites neighbors, students and community members of all sorts to learn and become involved.
Already, the Village Green Project is generating interest in our community and reflecting the missions of both the EPA and the library; the bench integrated into the monitoring station is being used by library patrons curious about air quality or the design of the air-monitoring station itself. It is also proving popular with families looking for a nice shady spot to sit and read to their children.
We librarians have particularly enjoyed the outreach events already associated with the Village Green and are looking forward to the future programming and outreach for the upcoming school year. Our community has demonstrated a strong interest in science and environmental topics, which isn’t a surprise given our proximity to Research Triangle Park, home to some of the nation’s top science and research and development organizations.
As the school year starts, we are looking forward to new opportunities for outreach at local schools that this project will generate, from elementary to high school, including the new Research Triangle High School with its Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) focus. Not only do we have the resources to teach students of all ages how to do research, we can offer them the opportunity to become part of new and exciting research in the making.
Hopefully, the South Regional Library’s collaboration with the EPA and other Village Green community partners is just the beginning of many fruitful and enduring partnerships that will continue to grow our community and nurture our learners.
About the author: Guest blogger Jennifer Brannen is a teen and adult services librarian at Durham County’s South Regional Library and has worked with EPA and Durham County to share the Village Green Project with the local community.