Welcome to the Medicine Hat Public Library
The Medicine Hat Public Library is a place for everybody. It's a community living room. COVID-19 has severely impacted our ability to provide this most fundamental of services: Providing a safe, welcoming place for our community - for everybody in our community - to socialize, interact, and make new connections. Since the pandemic began, our doors were forced shut for a total of 27 weeks (thankfully, we were still able to provide you with a no-contact pick-up service and virtual programs).
Unfortunately, there's not much we could have done to change these circumstances and we're powerless to prevent another provincially mandated closure. We can, however, make another aspect of our service even better by removing a barrier to access. We're talking about FREE library cards! FREE library cards for EVERY Hatter! We can't do this alone, though. In a year when our budget has been severely cut, we can't afford to drop our card fee. But we know that we can provide many benefits to businesses/individuals who are willing to sponsor library cards so that our community can access all of our great services for FREE!
We believe that a well-read community is a healthy community. Using your library card to read books, to conduct research, to take personal and professional development courses, to learn a new language, to get study help, to get tips on resumé writing, etc., can help make you a better person, a better employee, and can improve your mental health. These are the ways that having a library card can benefit our community.
Continue reading to learn the benefits of becoming a library card sponsor.
This sponsorship type provides FREE cards to the general public. The dropdown boxes below list the benefits of each sponsorship level.
Recognition:
Recognition:
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Recognition:
Recognition:
Want your employees to learn new skills, be more well-rounded, less stressed, and mentally healthier? Pay for their library cards!
Sponsorship fees are based on the number employees in your organization and can be calculated as: # of employees x $5.00.
To start an employee sponsorship, email us at employeesponsorship@shortgrass.ca. We'll give you all the details at that time, but basically, all we need from you is a list of your employee names. We'll get temporary library cards created for all of your employees and will hand deliver them to you. When your employees have their temporary cards they'll need to visit the Library to show us their identification; once we've verified ID we'll convert their card into one with full borrowing rights.
An optional extra is to request a presentation at your business by one of our library staff members to showcase to your employees how to access our physical collection and online resources.
Note: Employee sponsorships will need to be reinstated annually.
Is there an organization in Medicine Hat that you're passionate about supporting? Support the wellbeing of their clients by sponsoring their library cards!
Here's a short list of the types of organizations that you could choose to support with your sponsorship:
Have you ever rolled up to the Tim Horton's drive-through window to find out that the person in front of you paid for your order? That's a great feeling which often inspires you to pay-it-forward to the next person in line. If you feel like doing the most ultimate of Canadian gestures and paying for someone else's library card, we would surely appreciate you for it. We'll even throw imaginary confetti* at you.
*imaginary confetti throwing is not guaranteed and is subject to the discretion of each individual library employee
Help us reach our goal of putting a library card in every wallet/purse/murse/backpack/fanny pack this year by becoming a sponsor of our Library Card for Every Hatter campaign. If you would like to discuss these sponsorship levels in more detail, please contact Marina.