The Bartholomew County Public Library is using a racial equity collection grant from Indiana Humanities to start a young adult virtual book club.
Following the death of George Floyd and widespread protests, many libraries were flooded with requests for books and other resources regarding racial justice. This led to long wait times on popular titles. In recognition of this, Indiana Humanities invited libraries, schools and community organizations to apply for Advancing Racial Equity Collection Development Grants.
The grants, ranging from $290 to $1,000, were given to help these libraries and other entities “meet increased demand for materials to circulate in their communities.” For some libraries, this meant buying physical books to put back on their shelves or digital resources for patrons to use.
Sandy Allman, outreach librarian for the Bartholomew County Public Library, applied for the grant with a slightly different idea in mind: buying the materials to support a virtual book club on racial equity.
Through the grant, the library was awarded $981 to buy eight copies of 11 different books on the subject. These books will be used for a young adult book club, which Allman has dubbed “Get Lit!”
The club is an official chapter of the Project LIT community. Allman, the chapter’s facilitator, said that Project LIT is a “grassroots movement” that promotes literacy and listening to minority voices.
“Project LIT is normally done in a high school classroom, but I received approval from the Project LIT coordinator to actually start a group in a library for young adults,” she said. “We do have teen librarians here, so I didn’t want to encroach upon that age range. So that’s why I chose the young adults. It’s also an area we don’t really have a lot of programming for.”
The Get Lit! book club is for young adults ages 18-25, Allman said. She said that she came up with its title as a pun on literature.
“It will be meeting virtually for now, due to COVID,” she added. “We don’t have a date yet. The idea with Project LIT is it kind of empowers the readers to kind of be in charge. So hopefully, once I have a few people signed up, we can talk about when they would like to meet. Like I said, it would be virtually and probably during normal library hours.”
Allman said that meetings will probably be once monthly, or twice, if there’s a need. She added that the club will be flexible, with readers picking which book they want to read first.
“They don’t need to commit to reading every book every time, either,” she said.
Allman said that the purpose of the club is to “promote awareness of minority voices” and “social issues.”
“I think a lot of people are interested in being more socially active, socially aware … and maybe just don’t know where to start,” she said. “I think reading books is a great way to start, open up to discussion and, you know, it can lead anywhere from there.”
Allman said that the books purchased with grant funds will be book club copies and will not circulate at present. However, she said that these copies might be donated to one of the library’s satellite or deposit collections in the future.
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The Get Lit! Book Club is for young adults ages 18-25. Those interested in joining can do so by emailing Sandy Allman at sallman@mybcpl.org.
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Eight copies of the following titles have been purchased for the book club:
- "All American Boys" by Jason Reynolds
- "Dear Martin" by Nic Stone
- "I Am Alfonso Jones" by Tony Medina
- "Just Mercy: A True Story of The Fight For Justice" by Bryan Stevenson
- "March: Book One" by John Lewis
- "March: Book Two" by John Lewis
- "March: Book Three" by John Lewis
- "Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You" by Jason Reynolds
- "The 57 Bus" by Dashka Slater
- "The Hate U Give" by Angie Thomas
- "We Are Not Yet Equal: Understanding Our Racial Divide" by Carol Anderson
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According to its Facebook page, Project LIT is "a grassroots literacy movement empowering readers and leaders in hundreds of schools and communities around the world."
The Project LIT community was founded in 2016 by English teacher Jarred Amato and his students at Maplewood High School in Nashville, Tenn.
According to the Project LIT chapter leader application, there are over 1,300 chapters across 48 states and even a few international chapters.
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