KCKPL Media Blog

I’m reading Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown, MD, with Christopher Vaughan, founder of the Institute for Play (who knew there was an institute for that?). I’m not far into the book and already wondering how to make play more important in my life. According to the authors, it makes people more productive.  I’d say that libraries are often places where we get to play at work: meeting creative people like authors, engaging in storytelling, helping patrons find books and other materials that let them pursue their interests, and generally, just reveling in the millions of worlds available when you open a book. When I get a chance to spend some time playing away from work, I like to scrapbook – though I’ll never catch up with the piles of photos or the digital ones not yet printed.

So, does your employer value the productivity and skills that play can bring to the workplace? Does your job incorporate ways to play, or is it a chore? Find more information on this topic – or any other you can imagine – by going to the library nearest you. Maybe you’ll discover that your favorite way to play is to get lost in a mystery novel, or to plunge into a biography or explore science through a nonfiction best-seller.

Sonia Smith, PR Coordinator – Kansas City, Kansas Public Library