April 2025 Newsletter: Support your Local Library!

April Newsletter: Support your Local Library!

Check out what’s going on at the library in this month’s newsletter.

Featured: Celebrate National Library Week!

National Library Week is April 6-12, and this year’s theme is “Drawn to the Library.” Millions of people across the country visit their libraries every week. What’s the draw? Everything.

To celebrate National Library Week, we have some special events coming up:

On Monday, April 7 from 7-8:30pm, we’re hosting Michigan Notable Books author Curtis Chin! Chin wrote the award-winning memoir, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant; the book is about growing up Asian-American in Detroit and coming out in his working-class immigrant community, as well as being a first-generation college student at the University of Michigan. This event is free and open to the public. The first 50 attendees will receive a FREE copy of the book!

Our annual fundraiser Books, Bites, and Bids is also on the horizon! Join us Friday, April 11 from 5:30-8pm for a silent auction, catering, beer and wine, and live music! Tickets to attend are $35 per individual, or $70 per family. Funds raised will support local history initiatives, including purchasing equipment to help us digitize records, and improving access to our collections.

Featured: Love Letter to MeL

MeL is celebrating 20 years of service! MeL is the 24/7 library available throughout the state. This incredible service allows inter-library loan from 435 libraries through Michigan, and in 2024 alone over a million items were shared throughout the state! MeL also provides a huge resource of online databases; last year Michigan residents accessed over 19 million electronic articles, journals and other online resources to do homework, research, prepare for tests, and so much more. Residents also benefited from MeL’s authoritative sources on education, medicine, business, and history, among other topics to make informed decisions.

To commemorate this big anniversary, MeL is asking patrons to share their MeLCat story! What makes MeL special to you? How has it helped improve your life?

The feedback will be used throughout the year as they highlight MeLCat’s 20 years of impact in Michigan.

Featured: Congrats, ELHS Basketball Team!

Congratulations to the East Lansing boys basketball team! They won the Division 1 State Championship, their first state title since 1958! We’re so proud of them!

To celebrate, we've prepared a selection of basketball books to encourage you to pursue your own hoop dreams. Each title is a slam dunk! Check them out here.

Featured: Spring is Here!

Spring is here! Enjoy the great outdoors with some of our library resources:

The seed library is back! Choose from a selection of vegetable, herb and flower seeds to take home, plant, grow and enjoy. Visitors to the library may take home five free packets of seeds per season. You can find the Seed Library collection near the Service Desk.

Check out a birding kit or hiking kit and go exploring! Each backpack contains binoculars and field guides to help you make the most of your outdoor adventures.

Experience the wonders of spring with your community! Join our bird club, attend our bicycle friendly community workshop, or check out any of our other fun programs this spring!

Featured: One Seed, One Community

One Seed, One State is a state-wide program that chooses one seed each year to grow, save, and share. This year, we’re growing Little Finger Carrots! Stop by the library to pick up your free seeds and growing information!

Little Finger Carrots are a sweet, fast-maturing baby carrot. They reach their full size of 4 inches in only 65 days. Carrots do well in cool weather, so you can sow the seeds outdoors in April and May. Carrots are native to Afghanistan, and their flowers attract beneficial insects to your garden that prey on aphids and cabbage moths. They are a good companion plant for the onion family (alliums), tomatoes, peas, lettuce, radishes, sage & rosemary.

Michigan is fourth in the nation in the production of carrots. 126 million pounds are produced in Michigan annually, with 95% of them processed into canned or frozen carrots. The majority of Michigan carrots are grown in the west side of the state in rich, dark soils called “muck soil.”

One Seed, One State is brought to you by the MI Seed Library Network and your local seed library. The program’s mission is to strengthen our community by collectively growing one variety and providing a shared experience that teaches people how to grow nutritious foods and save seeds.

Featured: Community Writing Center Contest

Calling writers of all ages! The 4th annual Writing Contest from the Community Writing Center at ELPL is here. Submit works of short fiction or creative non-fiction 2,000 words or less by April 20 for a chance to receive cash prizes and be displayed on the library website. Authors will be notified of the results by mid-May. Submit works to the google form link here: https://forms.gle/bpPm7BMM7eBgEnaT6 Happy writing!

Submissions must meet the following requirements:

Submissions must be 2000 words or less
No more than one submission per author
No submissions that have been previously published in print or online
Submissions must be in a Word or PDF document,in 12-point Times New Roman font, and double-spaced.
Label your file as FirstName_LastName_Title
Please do not include your name or identifying information in the document itself, as the review process is anonymous.

Featured: Check out our New Strategic Plan!

Thanks to everyone who came to our strategic plan unveiling party on March 17! We had a great turnout, and it was so fun to celebrate all our hard work with the community.

The new plan will launch July 1 with the start of our next fiscal year. You can learn more about the strategic plan and our plans for the future at our website here.

Featured: Upcoming Programs

Library programs are free and open to the public; you don’t even need a library card! Unless otherwise noted, no registration is required.

Getting Started with Genealogy: Researching Your Family’s Heritage (adults): Saturday, April 5, 11am-12pm
- This program will explore key resources, including census records and newspapers, online tools and databases to assist you in your research, and successful strategies for finding your elusive ancestors.
Family Activity Day (kids): Sunday, April 6, 2-4pm
- Join us for crafts, games and reading with the MSU Friendshop!
Author Talk - Curtis Chin (adults): Monday, April 7, 7-8:30pm
- Curtis Chin is the author of the award-winning memoir, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant, a 2024 Michigan Notable Book selection. The book is about growing up Asian-American in Detroit and coming out in his working-class immigrant community, as well as being a first-generation college student at the University of Michigan. The first 50 attendees will receive a FREE copy of the book.
The Minds of Animals (adults): Tuesday, April 8, 7-8pm
- Dr. Mark Reimers will give us a whirlwind tour of recent discoveries about the minds of animals and how they think, feel, imagine, and remember. This is part of the Spartan Science Seminar Series.
Books, Bites, & Bids (all ages): Friday, April 11, 5:30-8pm
- Join us for our annual fundraiser! Enjoy a stellar silent auction, beer and wine, appetizers, live music, and more! Tickets to attend are $35 per person or $70 per family.
Bicycle Friendly Community Workshop (adults)
- Day 1: Saturday, April 12, 10am-4:30pm
- Day 2: Sunday, April 13, 1-5pm
- This interactive two-day workshop will benchmark our community on how welcoming we are to people who bike, offer concrete solutions to issues we identify, help us realize the community’s strengths and weaknesses, and provide a holistic view of how to strengthen and grow our bicycle network and programs through an equity lens. The workshop will also conduct a bike ride audit, organized and led by members of the East Lansing Transportation Commission. Please sign up to attend.
Page to Stage (adults): Tuesday, April 15, 1-2pm
- Read and discuss the play “Baba” at the library before it opens live at Williamston Theatre!
Holes: Behind the Scenes with All of Us Express Children's Theatre (teens): Monday, April 14, 3:30-4:30pm
- Join us for a special behind-the-scenes look at All-of-Us Express’ newest production: Holes! We’ll watch a scene from the show, meet the actors, have a close-up look at costumes and props, and a Q&A portion to learn more!
Movie Matinee (adults): Thursday, April 17, 1-3pm
- Featuring “Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser,” which combines footage of Monk in studio, on tour and behind the scenes with new interviews, archival photos and more to create a landmark aural and visual treat.
Saturday StoryTime (ages 1-5): Saturday, April 19, 10:30-11:15am
- Join us for stories, songs, and play!
Teen Leadership Council - TLC (high schoolers): Saturday, April 26, 4-5pm
- Assist and plan teen programming, gain experience that looks great on a resume, and earn volunteer hours for community service.
Bingo (teens): Monday, April 28, 3:30-4:30pm
- Play Bingo and win cool prizes!

Spotlight: Institute of Museum and Library Sciences

You may have heard in the news that on March 14, President Trump issued an Executive Order to eliminate funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the federal agency that funds libraries across the country.

Here at ELPL, most of our funding comes from a voter-approved property tax millage. That means our overall budget will stay fairly steady over the next several years; we don’t expect personnel cuts or reduced hours.

However, we still rely on funds from IMLS and the Library of Michigan to provide you with many of the services we love. Without IMLS funds, we will lose access to these.

Here are some of the services that will likely be affected.

Without federal funding, access to these services will be substantially reduced or removed entirely.

We’re still figuring out all the ways in which this executive order will affect our library. We’ll share what we know on our website and keep you updated as we learn more.

If you have any questions or comments, please reach out and we’ll be happy to talk more.

Find Us on BlueSky!

As BlueSky becomes increasingly popular, we’re joining too! Give us a follow! You can also still find us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

What’s your favorite social media platform? Let us know!

ELPL in the News:

Up and Coming Dates:

Books, Bites, and Bids will be held Friday, April 11! The library will close at noon to prepare.
The library will be closed Sunday, April 20.

Catch ELPL Next Month:

Be on the lookout for more excitement in May! ELPL will be sharing featured reading lists, book displays, and programs throughout the month. Some of the library programs will include:

Homebuyer Education Seminar
Ukulele Kings Concert
Poetry Readings
And more!

For more information, visit the library’s website or follow ELPL on social media!