This month’s featured image comes from Battle of the Books 2026 at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland, where more than 1,800 Howard County fifth graders competed. Read about this award-winning partnership with the Howard County (Maryland) Library System below.

The November 2026 newsletter of Let’s Move in Libraries also includes:

• An invitation to celebrate the 2026 I Partner with My Public Library Awardees on November 19
• What our Advisory Board has been working on
• An update on Anywhere Active, a new virtual fitness program for libraries
• How and why to join our monthly Birds of a Feather online conversation

But first, our main story.

Join us November 19 to celebrate the 2026 I Partner with My Public Library Awardees

On October 1 we announced the ten 2026 I Partner with My Public Library Awardees, featuring everything from a retired bookmobile taken up by a community group in rural Kentucky to partnerships city schools in the Philippines, the first award ever made outside North America. This month, we celebrate them together.

The 2026 Awards Ceremony will be held online on Thursday, November 19, at 2 pm Eastern / 11 am Pacific. It is free and open to all. Register now!

At the ceremony you’ll learn about this years winners, and leave inspired by the power of community, the power of partnership, and the power of public libraries. All are welcome and we hope you’ll share this invitation with colleagues and friends.

Full information on all ten will also be posted to our website in mid-November. Each issue of our newsletter will also be featuring one of this year’s awardees. October featured DepEd Makati’s partnership with Makati City Library in the Philippines , and this month it’s Merriweather Arts and Culture Center’s partnership with the Howard County (Maryland) Library System.

About the awards

Let’s Move in Libraries launched these awards in 2023, after a three-year national study found that the most impactful public library initiatives depend on strong partnerships with a wide range of collaborators. This year, 23 volunteer reviewers read 31 nominations from public libraries in 13 U.S. states, two Canadian provinces and the Philippines. With this year’s cohort, 41 partnerships have now been honored.

Awardee spotlight: Where fifth graders feel like rock stars

Merriweather Arts and Culture Center, nominated by Howard County Library System, Maryland

In April 2026, Merriweather Post Pavilion had an unexpected guest. During Howard County’s Battle of the Books, a raccoon appeared off stage, then made its way into the rafters above the audience. The library had some fun with it, creating T-shirts and hoodies that sold to benefit the Friends and Foundation of Howard County Library System.

The raccoon had plenty of company at the Battle of the Books. More than 1,800 fifth graders and their coaches filled the pavilion that day: 367 teams, representing 42 percent of the county’s public-school fifth graders, who had spent months reading the same nine books.

The library and the county’s public schools started Battle of the Books in 2008, with 66 teams in one high school gym. By 2019 it had grown to 313 teams across six high schools. The stakes are real. Fifth grade marks the shift from learning to read to reading to learn, and two in five of the county’s public-school fifth graders perform below proficiency in English and language arts.

When the battle came back in person in 2022 after the COVID-19 Pandemic, many families weren’t ready to crowd into gyms. So the library called the Merriweather Arts and Culture Center, the nonprofit that owns the pavilion. Its executive director, a longtime emcee of the Battle of the Books event, was enthusiastic. School and public librarians choose the books, sponsors give every team a set to keep, and the center brings a world-class venue and event production, treating the battle with the same care it gives major productions.

The result feels like a concert. A DJ gets students dancing before the competition. Authors greet them on the jumbo screens, team posters are on display, and students watch themselves on the big screens. In 2023 Jeff Kinney of Diary of a Wimpy Kid made a surprise appearance and handed out signed books. Parents say their children “felt like rock stars.”

The reading sticks, too. One parent wrote: “I saw my son, who is a reluctant reader and at times struggles with reading comprehension, become a more engaged reader throughout the year.” Teens who missed the battle in 2020 now come back as volunteers. One volunteer shared that a high school student on the tabulating team said her participation in Battle of the Books was “a turning point in her life.” She now reads three books a week.

Reviewers who evaluated the nomination of the Merriweather Arts and Culture Center were impressed. One called it a “strong, established partnership and event that has become a rite of passage. Excitement is real.” Another wrote, “This is a mutually beneficial partnership, raising the profiles of both partners.” A third put it simply: “It deserves to win.”

Congratulations to the Merriweather Arts and Culture Center and everyone at Howard County Library System! Learn more at local media sources WMAR, the Baltimore Sun, and see highlights on Instagram and YouTube.

What our Advisory Board has been working on

This fall we seated a new Let’s Move in Libraries Advisory Board, and we gave it a topic to work on this year. For the past decade Let’s Move in Libraries has helped library workers build health-promoting programs. Now we also want to help community partners connect with librarians. Our working tagline is “Your library is in this with you,” and we are starting with the organizations that activate and increase access to outdoor spaces and nature.

Eight board members from across the United States and Canada are meeting monthly, September through May.

September: what we bring to the table

We opened by asking each advisory board member to name one parks, nature, or outdoor organization they work with. In about ninety seconds we had listed state agencies, a federal wildlife refuge, an environmental education network, two local parks departments, a farm, and a bridge restoration project. In every topical area, there are more potential partners than we tend to assume.

Then we asked what libraries bring to this work. The answers clustered around four things: trust, physical location and grounds, capacity and coordination, and collections that go well past books. One board member described lending kites along with a map of the best places in town to fly them; others described snowshoes, hiking poles, fishing kits, and park passes. The through-line was low barrier to entry — nobody wants to buy snowshoes before they know whether they like snowshoeing.

We also named what partners tend to misunderstand about us. The strongest thread was adjacency: our work already overlaps theirs, we are not trying to compete with them, and we bring planning and logistics capacity that our partners sometimes do not have.

October: how to tell the story

We asked board members to send us real partnership stories, and we used what came in to draft a shared structure for telling them.

Working through the stories surfaced patterns we did not expect. Partners often make the first move. The cast is usually bigger than two organizations. Named individuals — a retired contractor, a Master Gardener, a patron who kept showing up — often carry the story more so than institutions. And the partnership you can see usually grows out of and on top of an older relationship.

One gap stood out. Across every story we gathered, only one said explicitly what the partner got out of working with the library, in the partner’s own words. That is the thing a prospective partner most wants to know, and it is the one thing none of us supplied without being asked. We are thus emphasizing “partner voice” in our draft storytelling template. We now invite you to use it to tell your story!

Send us a story

If your library has worked with partner (organization or individual) of any kind to increase access to and/or to activate outdoor spaces, we would like to hear about it. A link or a few sentences is plenty. And if you can tell us what your partner got out of it, even better. Send us your story to help us continue to make this model stronger and more effective.

Anywhere Active Is Live: Meet the Instructors Bringing Fitness to Your Library

In August we shared news of Anywhere Active, a new virtual fitness program for libraries from the team behind the Library Speakers Consortium. It launched October 1. Here’s an update from co-founder and CEO Zach Rubin. Please note that we are sharing this news as a public service announcement only.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon at your library, and a group of older adults is in your meeting room following along with a gentle chair yoga class. Meanwhile, multiple other patrons join the very same class from home. No instructor contracts to negotiate, no scrambling to cover a cancellation, and no stretching your programming budget to pay for a weekly fitness teacher. Anywhere Active makes all this possible!

Before we even streamed our first class, libraries from coast to coast had signed on as members, including systems in California, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, and more.

Now that classes are up and running, we’re already looking ahead to new series, new instructors, and an on-demand library that grows with every live session. As you plan programs to support your patrons’ New Year’s resolutions, now is a great moment to picture what a weekly fitness lineup could look like at your library.

Patrons can participate in each week’s classes live or on-demand, and every class has modifications built in for a wide range of fitness and mobility levels:

Tuesdays | Yoga Series | 3:00 PM ET

• Hatha Yoga: Alignment Basics with Sean Haleen (1st & 3rd Tuesdays)
• Chair Yoga with Janice (2nd & 4th Tuesdays)

Wednesdays | Rotating Variety Series | 12:00 PM ET

• Mat Pilates with Keira Belisle-Lamoureux (6-week series that began October 7)
• Strength and Movement series with Jacob Buckenmyer (6-week series beginning November 18)
• Forever Fit with Manny Gonzalez (6-week series beginning January 6)

Thursdays | Mind-Body Series | 1:00 PM ET

• Gentle Tai Chi and Qigong with Erica Heinrichs (1st & 3rd Thursdays)
• Guided Meditation and Mindfulness with Denise Dempsey (2nd & 4th Thursdays)

Every live session is recorded and added to our searchable library of over 1,000 on-demand classes, so patrons who miss a class can catch it whenever it fits their day.

Meet one of our expert instructors, who will lead library patrons through welcoming and accessible movement.

Member libraries receive full public performance rights, so you can offer home access to individual patrons, host group workouts in your meeting rooms, or bring classes along for outreach at senior centers, schools, and other community partners. Each subscription also includes a custom-branded microsite, real-time participation analytics, ready-to-use marketing materials, and step-by-step event hosting guides.

We’re just getting started, and I can’t wait to see how libraries make these classes their own. To see how Anywhere Active could fit into your 2027 programming, visit our website to learn more and request a demo. I’d love to hear from you!

— Zach Rubin, Co-Founder and CEO of Perpetual Learning

Are there any resources you’d love to share with the Let’s Move in Libraries community? We want to share whatever is new and useful! Contact us to share in a future newsletter. 

How and why to join our monthly Birds of a Feather online conversation

Want to join a community of public library workers and partners interested in the topics celebrated by Let’s Move in Libraries?

Have a burning question you’d like to ask other librarians?

Join us in our monthly Birds of a Feather conversation series.

Since February 2023 we’ve hosted a monthly one-hour Birds of a Feather online conversation.

We invite all to sign up to join us Wednesday, November 18, 2026 at 12 pm Eastern / 9 am Pacific for the next installment in this series of inspiring, engaging, open and lively conversations.

What is a Birds of a Feather conversation? It’s an opportunity for individuals with shared interests to gather together (birds of a feather flock together) to share resources, inspire one another, and generally build community.

These events are never recorded so that all participants can share freely. Join us!

Our October call brought together library workers and partners from California, Connecticut, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Here are the resources shared during the call:

• The Forest Therapy School: one participant trained here to become a Certified Forest Therapy Guide. They now lead sessions such as Forest Bathing: A Mindful Walk in the Woods at E.C. Scranton Memorial Library in Madison, Connecticut, on Friday, November 13, at 10 am.
• Nature Journaling with North Olympic Library System: staff from Forks Library and the North Olympic Land Trust led a free nature-journaling walk at the Elk Creek Conservation Area in Forks, Washington. It was part of a Nature Series the two partners offer together.
• I BIRD NY Library Lending Program: New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) provides public libraries with birding backpacks, binoculars and guides to lend for free.
• New Birding Backpacks Designed for Beginners: Baldwinsville (NY) Public Library lends two free birding kits, including an I BIRD NY Birding Backpack.
• Belleville Public Library partners with the Bay of Quinte Bird Team to offer new Bird Watching Kits to borrow (91X FM, October 7, 2026). The kits include adult- and child-sized binoculars, a field guide, trail maps and a Quinte Conservation parking pass. Anyone with a library card can borrow one free for a week in Belleville, Tweed and Stirling-Rawdon, Ontario.
• Let’s PLAY: in Stillwater, Oklahoma, the Early Childhood Coalition works with anchor partners including Stillwater Public Library. QR codes at stops around town, starting downtown, invite the community to “come out and PLAY!”
• ConnectWell’s new Cooking is Fundamental program (scroll to the bottom of the page): a turnkey mobile kitchen on wheels, with accessories for hands-on cooking programs for 20 participants and a healthy-cooking curriculum for all ages.
• From our archives: the Kitchen Cart Inventory List that Dacy L. Shute, Community Engagement Librarian at Hickory (NC) Public Library, used to buy kitchen equipment with a grant from the State Library of North Carolina. It was first shared in our August 2023 newsletter.
• More than 30 people signed up for Hickory Public Library’s Sourdough Bread Baking Class with Melissa Falcone of True Cut Ranch. The class covers every step of making sourdough, with freshly baked bread to sample.

Several of these are just the kind of outdoor partnerships our Advisory Board is learning from. If your library has one, send us the story!

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