Art Opportunities for Older Adults

Interested in connecting older adults in your service area with opportunities for artistic expression and development? The Lifetime Arts organization and the Alzheimer's Poetry Project both offer unique opportunities to engage older adults creatively, using the library.

About Lifetime Arts:

"Libraries, the most universal and most democratic of America's cultural institutions, are "age neutral" and so appeal to older adults who are reluctant to go to senior centers. Increasingly important as community centers for learning and cultural access, libraries are ideally positioned to evolve as centers for creative aging.

Now in its third year, CREATIVE AGING IN OUR COMMUNITIES: THE PUBLIC LIBRARIES PROJECT is based on a vision for mobilizing the trusted, neutral, information-rich public space of the library to deliver arts education for and with older adults. That vision includes building effective collaborations between teaching artists and librarians and building the capacity of different library systems to carry out and sustain creative aging programs. Our work to date affirms this vision. Teaching artists and librarians find that they share a vision for positive aging and bring complementary strengths to designing and implementing meaningful programs for older adults."

About Alzheimer's Poetry Project:

"The mission of the Alzheimer's Poetry Project is to facilitate the creativity of people living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementia. We engage people navigating memory loss in an exciting call and response performance during the first half of the workshop. The session leader recites lines of classic, well-loved poems and the group joins together in echoing the words. During the second half of the workshop the well-known poems serve as inspiration and models for a communal creation of an original poem. Each session ends with a performance of the group's newly created poem, giving recognition to the lines and words the participants have contributed.

We seek to bond together as a community built on shared words, passions, and discoveries through the performance and creation of poetry. The National Endowment for the Arts listed the APP as a best practice for the NEA Arts and Aging initiative. The APP was awarded the 2012 MetLife Foundation Creativity and Aging in America Leadership award in the category of Community."

Librarians' Do You Need Yet Another Book to Read?

Check out This Book is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson. She discusses new librarians and how they are perceived under a new light. Now more than ever librarians are becoming more important to assist information seekers sift through the sea of information that awaits them around every corner. This funny yet insightful book is sure to make you stop an think about what you have done in the past and how that has changed of the years with so many advances in information sciences. Are you staying afloat in the sea of information?

For an excerpt from the book and a short article on the book please visit this website.

UNC Institute on Aging Information Center | Recent PubAlerts Highlights

These a few of the great resources from the UNC Institute on Aging Information Center recent PubAlerts which includes new publications reflecting the interests of the North Carolina Collaboration on Lifelong Learning and Engagement.

To subscribe to PubAlert.

Partnership for a Nation of Learners: Joining forces, creating value. Institute of Museum and Library Services (June 2009, .pdf format, 54p.)

Engaging baby boomers and their offspring as volunteers: The Californian way. Stacey Aldrich. APLIS. 2009 Jun; 22(2): 89-90.

Volunteerism, health, and civic engagement among older adults. Gottlieb BH; Gillespie AA. Canadian Journal on Aging. 2008 Winter; 27(4): 399-406.

"Senior spaces," the library place for baby boomers and older adults. Allan M. Kleiman. Interface. 2009 Spring; 31(2): 12.

Our changing users: The aging of the population. Danielle H. M. King. Interface. 2009 Winter; 31(1).

Retention begins before day one: Orientation and socialization in libraries.
Connie Chapman. New Library World. 2009; 110(3/4): 122-135.

Older workers on the move: Recareering in later life. Richard W. Johnson, Janette Kawachi, and Eric K. Lewis. AARP (April 2009, .pdf format, 70p.)

Age in America

This week Libraries for the Future announced the launch of new website, AgeinAmerica.org "part of a project aimed at capturing and updating images of aging in the United States. The website reflects insights from museums and libraries working together in three diverse communities to spark local conversations about the meaning of age and the changing role of the older adult in the home, the workplace, and the community." (From the mission of Age in America.) Learn more by visiting, AgeinAmerica.org.