Monday, March 1, 2021
Zoobean, parent company of Beanstack, the state’s online reading challenge platform, recently selected Berlin Public Library as one of the national #WinterRead 2021 winners. For the fourth year in a row, Beanstack offered their Annual Winter Reading Challenge. Simon & Schuster’s Books Like Us program sponsored the challenge, which supports public libraries and school systems throughout the United States. Berlin Public Library was selected as one of the winners, and will receive a set of 50 "books like us" from Simon & Schuster as well as a virtual author visit from one of the eight authors listed on this page. Chris Kalupa, Berlin Public Library director/patron services coordinator, shared the following:
Our staff is very excited to be chosen as one of six nationwide libraries to win the Beanstack Winter Read 2021, Books Like Us challenge. We decided to participate in Beanstack's Winter Read program to offer our patrons something different during the winter months, especially since we haven't been able to do much in terms of in-person programming. Not once did we expect to be one of the winning libraries. Our patrons blew us away with their participation. We initially set a community goal of 10,000 minutes of reading, and they crushed that goal within a week. And now to date, our patrons have logged over 100,000 minutes of reading! We're so excited that we get to reward them with something extra special! The Berlin Library would like to thank the Division for Libraries and Technology for sponsoring our participation in Beanstack through a LSTA grant.
~Berlin Public Library staff
Written by:
Tessa Michaelson Schmidt
Library Services Team