The Agenda

What do you do at the library? Read? Research? Look for new movies or music? Seek out reference materials? Check your e-mail? Use the printers? Or is it where you meet your neighbors? Have meetings? Or just go because it's safe, it's free, and it's one of the only places you can go where you're not subject to endless advertising?

It's New! It's Yours!

by Jean Cozzens

During the month of March 2006, at the Fox Point Branch of the Providence Public Library, we built a giant cardboard city as a collaboration between a whole bunch of people, ranging in age from two through grandmother age. The outcome of the experiment was entirely unknown: introduce a bunch of scrap cardboard, hot glue, “conventional” glue, scissors and X-acto knives and duct tape, and boxes and boxes of fabric, junk, and random materials from the Recycling Center into a branch library that regularly serves as the vital after school hangout spot for kids from the Vartan Gregorian Elementary School down the street—with one local artist/designer as mediator, and three willing librarians as facilitators and cheering squad.