At Home on the San Francisco Peninsula: The Third Place

Where’s your Third Place?  Here on the San Francisco Peninsula Rosalind Kutler wants your Third Place to be the library!  No, not 3rd place like the red ribbon in a competition kind of third place.  She means the third place you can regularly go to (at Home being the first place and at Work the second) and “chill” for awhile, like Cheers,  a place “where everybody knows your name”.  Not that they’re setting up a bar in the library!  Rosalind, Adult Services and Programming Librarian for the Redwood City Public Library,  considers the library’s Third Place role to be one of its main functions in the modern world.  And the focus of her work reflects this.  Not only is Rosalind transforming the public image of the library to a place where talking is allowed, she is encouraging library patrons to sing, dance and express themselves (in the right venues, of course)!

The Redwood City Public Library calendar provides a robust offering of events, geared to please a variety of community cross-sections.  From her Book Group Let’s Talk Books that meets on Thursdays in the Library Fireplace Room to the Movies at the Library series in the Community Room, Rosalind is finding ways to open the Library’s doors to residents from all walks of life.  

In addition to these regular monthly offerings, a sampling of February’s happenings includes:
Meet the Author with Jessica O’Dwyer, adoptive mother of 2 children born in Guatamala, who will be on hand to discuss her first book Mamalita: An Adoption Memoir and the controversy surrounding the foreign adoption process from which the book arose.  (February 5)
Books That Free Your Inner-Artist!  an evening of free book-arts activities for kids, teens and adults (February 17)
Green Jazz - A Tangria Group Jazz Experience  an afternoon free concert (February 19)

Besides books and a place to go for some fun events, what else does the Redwood City Main Library  have to offer?  Plenty!  They recently completed their Food for Fines holiday canned food drive for Second Harvest Food Bank, and it was a resounding success. According to Rosalind, “It was great experience, helping people who couldn’t afford to use their library cards any more” and “a great joy to forgive those fines.”   She noted that people who didn’t have any outstanding fines brought food anyway.  Talk about a win-win for the community!  

Rosalind is also hard at work on the Library’s Main Event of the year, coming in October, One Book - One Community in which residents of Redwood City and all of San Mateo County are invited to all read the same book and then join in a variety of community-wide events, including meeting the author, related movies and assorted activities.  Look for the details in an upcoming press release later this month!

For more on these events and to see what the Library has in store for the rest of 2011, click on Redwood City Library Events  or on Kids or Teens on the left side bar menu of the Redwood City Library home page.  It is, thanks to Rosalind and a group of dedicated volunteers Friends of the Library, a welcoming Third Place!

And when it comes to your “First Place” at home on the San Francisco Peninsula contact Wende Schoof.