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Date: 10/15/2019
WESTFIELD – With monthly events and seasonal activities, the Westfield Athenaeum offers family fun for Westfield’s residents.
Becky Blackburn, the public service librarian at the Athenaeum, said the library offers plenty of free activities, but also has some more restricted activities as well. One such activity is the six-week American Sign Language course the library is offering starting Oct. 29.
“We hardly ever charge for anything but in this case the class was already very expensive,” she said.
Blackburn added the library is also offering a genealogy class so Westfield residents can learn how to research their own family trees. She said anyone interested in the class has to register ahead of time, but it is free and happens every Tuesday.
One of free monthly events is the History Chats series that includes discussion different aspects of Westfield’s history. These chats started three months ago and occur the first Wednesday of the month.
“We just pick something about Westfield history and people just come in and bring pictures, or stories,” Blackburn said. She added the history chats have been getting larger each month.
Each month the library also hosts a music movie night the last Wednesday of every month.
“It’s just fun things about music and we’ll do some documentaries as well,” Blackburn said. She added that they cannot include the names of the movies due to copyright issues.
Blackburn added that the boys and girls library always has events happening. However, she said one event in particular has become a big draw.
“The big thing they are kind of focusing on is escape rooms. Teens are coming in and planning escape rooms and then putting them on, that seems to be very popular,” Blackburn said.
Although popularity for the Athenaeum’s monthly events are growing, Blackburn said she is hoping to bring more people into the library for events after they had to host most of their activities at the senior center for almost two years while renovations were underway at the Athenaeum.
One of the newest events at the library is a Cookbook Club that started just last week and Blackburn said it is already beginning to take off.
“It’s very popular, the cookbook changes every month, people bring in a dish and there’s a lot of food -- it’s a good time,” she said.
The Athenaeum will also be playing a role in PumpkinFest when they host the Treasures of Westfield treasure hunt throughout the library during the festival.