If you participate in the whole gift-giving aspect of the holiday season, there are a couple ways to go about it. The traditional way would be finding out what your people want, visiting a store in some capacity, – be it safely in-person or comfortably online - and purchasing said desirables.
The other, far more sensible option would be listening to the advice of your local library (have we ever steered you wrong?) and considering the many book adjacent ways to spread joy.
Gift yourself a library card.
Ok, so this is the most obvious one – both in terms of what you expected we were going to say, and also with the well established gift giving ratio of one for you, one for me. If you still find yourself without the only truly necessary piece of plastic, it’s never too late to right this wrong. You can even pretend you’re in some kind of transformative holiday narrative visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come and your bookless future. A TPL card is free to anyone in the Niagara Region and gives you access to around 90,000 of our own items and close to a million once you factor in the other libraries in our LiNC consortium. As an added bonus, you can now register for your card online via our website and pick it up at your convenience.
Getting or gifting a new device this holiday? Fill it for free.
Electronics are expensive enough without having to spend additional money on subscription services or weekly book purchases. Your TPL card gives you access to dozens of free magazines and comics via RBdigital, digital content via Newspaper Source Plus, and thousands of e-book and audiobook titles via OverDrive/Libby. We offer tech support to help patrons get to know their device (a very popular service come January) and we’re happy to teach you how to download items and make the most of our electronic offerings. We now even have an in-house power tower charging station for all your away from outlet low battery needs.
Looking for more tangible gift giving paraphernalia?
Visit the Little Library Shop. As you may know, our Friends of the Library operate a small shop inside our building. All profits help to fund additional library programs and services. Items are often handcrafted by patrons or participants in past programs such as our Needle Pointers group. This year, you’ll find an array of handmade nonmedical face masks (the new stocking stuffer darling), City of Thorold branded items such as t-shirts, hats, and postcards, handstitched knitwear like scarves and mittens, and, of course, handcrafted cat toys (a natural library pairing). How much more local can you shop than supporting neighborhood handiwork from your small-town library? We may even start labeling everything artisanal to enhance the whole experience.
If you’re looking for giving opportunities outside your bubble, consider contributing to our Holiday Drive in support of Community Care of St. Catharines Thorold.
Shifting from an emphasis on toy collection, the organization is looking for more of the basics this year. We are exclusively collecting non-perishable food items, toiletries, and gift cards throughout December.
To donate, please place any food/toiletry items inside the collection bin beside our non-perishables tree with the ketchup bottle topper (yep, that’s a thing that we have), or submit your gift cards to either the circulation or information desk for safekeeping.
We appreciate any/all support you are able to give in a year that has been exceedingly difficult for many. For more information on anything from tech help to holiday donation queries, you can contact us at 905-227-2581 or by email at [email protected]
