The Book Club Project is all about collaboration with several people throughout the reading community. The projects main goal is to help elders enjoy reading and feel like they are part of a club. Josh Serria is the client of this project; he also was very helpful in setting up meetings and distributing our flyers to potential members. He is the manager from the Arbor's assisted living facility.
The two community partners for this project were Professor Lauren Hightower from Arkansas Tech University and the Pope County Library System. Professor Hightower is a nursing instructor at Arkansas Tech. She not only attended the book club meetings, she gave greater advice about the aging process. We used her advice along with the help from Josh Serria to create a fun and active book club that could accommodate a variety of interest. Our local county library system was also helpful in selecting books that were appropriate to use with the Libby APP. The Libby APP has also helped throughout this project; it is an app that is free and lets you borrow books, read ebooks, audiobooks, and digital magazines from your local library. Our East team also created a google form and surveyed several elders for detailed results on what books to read next. This was done in person using Ipads to help the senior citizens access the information about books and sign up for the Libby APP. The Pope County Library System also assisted the seniors with library cards for anyone that did not have one. This was a long process but worth it.12 new library cards were applied for at the first meeting.
Book Club meets once a month at the Arbor's. At the December meeting we discussed the "Thursday Night Murder Club" with 11 attendees. At end of the meeting the club decided to try something different and each person read a new book that would be discussed at the January meeting. We look forward to see what everyone has read!