Balancing traditional and virtual storytelling events in a post-COVID world: Aruba's Children's Book Festival in 2022 and beyond

Abstract

In 2021, Biblioteca Nacional Aruba, the Aruba National Library, organized its annual Children's Book Festival for the twenty-ninth time. The COVID-19 pandemic hit the small Caribbean island nation of Aruba and its tourism-focused economy quite hard, and disrupted all areas of society, including government and education. The 2020 lockdown forced many library operations to either seize or to go virtual. With reading promotion and library activities traditionally being in-person and hands-on, Aruba's annual week-long celebration of children's books and reading, traditionally being planned to include authors, illustrators and storytellers visiting schools, and library staff organizing, facilitating and guiding reading events both on-site at the library and in other locations, the 2020-2022 COVID pandemic forced the organizing committee to be resilient and inventive, and try to let the planned annual week-long "Festival di Buki pa Mucha" take place without letting COVID-induced disruptions interrupt the children's reading and storytelling experience: the 2020 edition took place completely online, attempting to reach the school children through television and smart board screens in their classrooms, implementing social media and video streams in the process; The 2021 edition took place between two COVID-19, and consequently was organized as a more hybrid event. With the pandemic appearing to be largely behind us, the 2022 edition, which is planned towards the end of the year, in November, promises to be a combination of both worlds: traditional in-school and in-person events, combined with the limitless possibilities of producing virtual and audiovisual experiences, both live and on-demand, to potentially reach beginning and experienced young readers not only in schools and at the library, but also at a time of their own choosing, at home, and even beyond the limits of the island.

The purpose of this workshop is to initiate an interactive conversation between public, children's and outreach librarians, exchanging ideas and best practices between library professionals of the Caribbean, in order to discuss the best path forward for these essential types of events, while balancing both the traditional and virtual library event space.