Clemons Library now has toys that people with young children can check out for two weeks at a time. According to a Cavalier Daily article, fourth year students David Birkenthal and Madison Lewis secured a grant from the Office of the Dean of Student’s Public Service Programming Board to begin a pilot project of circulating toys in the Jefferson-Memorial Regional Library (JMRL) system last fall. Birkenthall and Lewis then pitched the idea to UVA Teaching and Learning Librarian Paula Archey who was a fan of the JMRL project.“It makes sense we would do it in Clemons,” says Archey, “because that’s where our children’s books are.” The idea is to do for toys what lending libraries have always done for books—lend them for limited times to people who have only a temporary use for them. The program is aimed primarily at graduate and doctoral students who have families. “It’s hard to buy a bunch of toys,” Lewis says, “and kids get so interested and uninterested in toys so quickly. [Having] a way to get a toy for two weeks and come back without having to pay for a new toy every two weeks is really nice thing for families and for their kids.”

Interested? Take a look at the Virgo record and check out some toys!

Read the article “Students introduce Clemons Library toy service for community members” (Cavalier Daily 2/15/2018)