Find Your Joy - National Library Week 2026

National Library Week (April 19-25) highlights the valuable role libraries and library professionals play in transforming lives and strengthening our communities. This year’s theme is “Find Your Joy.” My joy is borrowing books, attending programs, and connecting with others. Did you know that you can calculate the value of the resources and services offered from libraries?

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The Dragon From Chicago: Friends Visits with Author Pamela Toler

A dragon is fierce, fearless, and worthy of the most profound respect. Sigrid Schultz personifies this description, and she was justifiably proud of the sobriquet that was bestowed upon her. Read about this remarkable woman ─ who may have been forgotten if not for Pamela Toler’s book, The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany.

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A Dark Time In Our History

“I’m thrilled now that The Way We Were is considered a classic love story, but it’s also about a dark time in our history, the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, when people were informing on each other and subject to loyalty oaths,” said actress Barbra Streisand at the recent Academy Awards.

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Why We Celebrate Jane Austen at 250

What makes Jane Austen’s novels so timeless and unforgettable that 250 years after her birth, we are still talking about and celebrating her?

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35 Years of Minutes, 35 Years of Women

What do 35 years of meeting minutes reveal about Friends of the Edgewater Library?

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Snuggle Up!

Children enjoy being read to, and it can be an enjoyable experience for their readers as well. Besides that, studies have shown that children who are read to regularly are more likely to develop early literacy skills. Read what’s happening at the Edgewater Branch.

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Native Pop!

The images, cultures, crafts, and lifeways of Indigenous peoples have appeared in the popular cultures of settlers since arriving in the Western Hemisphere—often in inappropriate or disrespectful ways. Read more about an informative exhibit at the Newberry Library.

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Book Groups As Community

As British author Cailin Moran so artfully writes, “A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination.”

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Remembering Japanese Americans

Shortly after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the United States government uprooted 120,000 people of Japanese descent from their homes and banished them to 10 remote internment camps.

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Writing For The Love Of It

It’s truly a labor of love!

Welcome to the third issue of Writings from the Edge, the magazine of stories, poems, and essays by writers from the Edgewater Library writing group.

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Celebrating Filipino American History Month

Who knew? Chicago boasts one of the largest and most vibrant groups of Filipino Americans in the United States. Many of these individuals live in the Uptown, Edgewater, and Rogers Park neighborhoods.

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Books On The Chopping Block

These seemingly unrelated books have something in common: To Kill a Mockingbird, Beloved, 1984, and Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl. They’re all on the list of most banned and challenged books.

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