Borrowed

We're launching a mini-series about four neighborhoods that made Brooklyn the vibrant, diverse borough it is today! “Building Brooklyn” will take you to Gowanus, the Navy Yard, Sunset Park, and Canarsie to discover some of Brooklyn’s most unique and over-looked stories. 

It’s the start of summer, which means block parties, beach trips, and also, big primary elections here in New York City. This will be the city's first election cycle where voters will get to cast their votes for up to five candidates for each position. It’s called ranked choice voting.

"To me, what all these books say is independence and personal choice," says Nefertiti Matos of the stacks of Braille books at NYPL's Andrew Heiskell Library. In this episode, we talk about what inclusion means, whether it's creating tactile graphics so that all may encounter the visual world, or making our virtual classes accessible to kids with disabilities. 

It’s been a rough year. So, we gathered all the good news we could find to brighten your podcast feed. Hear kids read to a therapy dog, a library love story, babies learning ASL, and adults age 90 and older learning to use Zoom.

Ingrid Douglas never finished high school as a teenager. When she started looking for a better job at age sixty, she found not having a degree was a huge barrier. So, Ingrid came to the library to get her diploma. In this episode, we talk to students and instructors at BPL about how the library can be a refuge for those who have experienced trauma or adversity on their path to education.

Burnout from work is something a lot of us are thinking about right now. It's been on the minds of librarians, too. We talk to a group of library workers who got together to combat the stress of the profession, and support each other.

Hear me out: A Vietnamese refugee opens a restaurant to keep her kids out of gangs, Brooklynites on their changing borough, a daughter seeks justice after her father's death from COVID-19, giving birth during a pandemic, the meaning of shelter for families experiencing homelessness, and the last lesbian bar in Brooklyn. These are all Brooklyn stories, created as part of BPL's first ever audio storytelling workshop.

Hear me out: a Bed-Stuy kid grapples with her Brooklyn identity, a Chassidic woman follows her faith to from South Africa to Crown Heights, musicians find belonging in the South Indian music diaspora, a Brooklynite memorializes early activism in the borough, and a Black Puerto Rican land worker paves her own career path. These are all Brooklyn stories, created as part of BPL's first ever audio storytelling workshop.

Our work in the correctional facilities in New York City didn't stop during the pandemic. We talked with the Justice Initiatives team at BPL to hear how they are connecting with patrons who are incarcerated and supporting families with loved ones in jails and prisons.  

What do librarians do all day? When they're not planning programs or working the reference desk, these librarians are also obscure trivia players, birders and ... sword fighters!