Park City Library has a three-year strategic plan that focuses on user experience, inclusivity, community relationships, and lifelong learning. The library has defined lifelong learning which encourages and fosters growth across all life stages. The goal for this year is to develop intergenerational programming.
What is Intergenerational Programming?
For the past year, the Park City Library has focused on integrating various ages into events offered at the library. Librarians are planning for future events that intermingle a variety of life stages. Studies have shown that communities that celebrate a variety of life stages and allow for interactions between ages foster a more cohesive and supportive community. Rather than isolating user experiences into separate age groups, the Park City Library values intergenerational events (seniors, adults, teens, youth, children) when applicable. The Library hopes to create a shared user experience and foster multigenerational relationships within the community. Events might be integrated within ages or might have shared experiences or topics around different events.
Partnering with Local Organizations
Programming Librarians at the Park City Library look to local nonprofits and organizations to partner on events. These allow librarians to expand events offerings that focus on community topics and issues. Some examples of past and future partnered events include:
MAG Aging and Family Services provided “Favorite Things Memory” kits that help those with dementia or other cognitive deficits by triggering special memories of life experiences. This encourages interaction between loved ones and caregivers in the hope to bring about smiles, rouse emotions, and make connections.
Love and Logic Parenting Class which provides childcare during the program, in partnership with the Christian Center of Park City.
Librarians visit the Park City Senior Center on a monthly basis to offer technical assistance for phones, tablets, or laptops.
Mindfulness Mondays is a weekly program sponsored by the Friends of the Park City Library and provides access to mindfulness activities for children.
Highlights of Intergenerational Events
It has been a fun year to expand events that are self-directed activities that usually span a longer amount of time (months or days). These are some of the Library’s most successful events. For example, the Library hosted a Halloween Costume Swap that was not just for kids but adults too. In January the Library offered a puzzle swap for National Puzzle Month. The puzzles varied from 10-piece to 1000-piece puzzles which appealed to all abilities and interests levels. The Winterfest, Haunted House, Tea Party offered a variety of events that appealed to a variety of ages. In April and May, the Earth Day celebration and Star Wars Day events were expanded on to become more intergenerational. The Green Reads book club is a great intergenerational program allowing youth and adults to discuss key topics from environmental-themed books. Storytimes also incorporated educational topics that include social equity, library digital resources, childcare issues with local leaders, etc.  And a monthly guessing jar is always a fun interactive piece for anyone to do when they visit the Library.