The Kenai City Council passed an ordinance that accepts and appropriates an interlibrary cooperation grant from the Alaska State Library for the Kenai Community Library StoryWalk® Project. The Kenai Community Library has been awarded state funds in the amount of $5,476 for the purchase and installation of a StoryWalk®, which is a series of outdoor signs featuring pages from a children’s book. It provides an opportunity for parents and caregivers to be their children’s first teacher while reading and playing outdoors.
Library Director, Katja Wolfe, told the Kenai City Council:
“We’re going to be purchasing about 17 separate posts and frames. They will be placed along a trail or possibly even around the library. We will be working with the parks and recreation department. They actually have been helping us putting this grant together. We’re working with them figuring out where this is going to go and hopefully once we order those they will be installed. We will then have some programming that goes along with it. we’re hoping that between 4 and 5 different books every year, probably the seasons. We’re going to be taking a picture book and we’re going to tear apart, which we normally don’t do. each of the pages is going to be in one of the frames. The program’s going to be mostly our youth services librarian, he’s going to be walking with the children. They’re going to be doing early literacy programs. There’s also the parents, by themselves, can also walk along the path. This is an early literacy grant. What we’re hoping to do eventually is kind of branch out and do some adult programming. Maybe a Halloween scary story walk or some sort of a historical story walk where we can collaborate with organizations in the city.”
The library staff will use the StoryWalk® to engage patrons outside the library and provide early literacy programs and activities. The intent is to provide information to local and home schools to get the word out and get more participation in the project.
Ordinance 3238-2021 unanimously passed the Kenai City Council.