Libraries and Autism

The week following the trip to Graves Mountain, I was on the road again. This time my traveling compainions were Meg Kolaya, Director of the Scotch Plains Public Library in New Jersey, and Dan Weiss, Director of the Fanwood Memorial Library also in New Jersey.

With funding from New Jersey State Library through Infolink: The Eastern New Jersey Regional Library Cooperative, the two libraries participated in “Welcoming Library Spaces for the Autism Community and Their Families” project. The result was a 20-minute training video and pragmatic advice on how to best serve people in the community who have autism. Much of the information presented in the workshop may be found at www.jointlibrary.org/autism. It should be noted that this website received am American Library Association award in 2009.

Meg and Dan presented four workshops in one week in Virginia: the first workshop was near Richmond, the second was in Waynesboro, the third in Christiansburg and the fourth was in Newport News. Meg and Dan were troopers as we traveled over 500 miles in one week. As we were on a pretty tight schedule, we missed many of the historial sites along the way. They included the Woodrow Wilson musuem, Thomas Jefferson's home, Jamestown and Yorktown.

At the urging of Barbara Kreuter, librarian at Stanton Public Library (seen on the the right), and Bethany Johnson, librarian at the Waynesboro Public Library, we did take a slight detour for CHOCOLATE. Cocoa Mill Chocolates, to be exact, in the town of Lexington, Virginia.