February 13, 2023 5:37am
The Huron County Library has won this year’s Ontario Public Library Service Award for Innovation for their In Your Backyard program.
County Librarian and Director of Cultural Services Beth Rumble says Ontario’s West Coast had helped promote In Your Backyard.
“Ontario’s West Coast had promoted In Your Backyard throughout the pandemic and Library staff took that and kind of ran with it and developed this virtual program where we visited all corners of the county and had people local to the area speak about the hidden gems in their specific area,” Rumble said.
Rumble says it grew from there and they decided to make it into a contest.
“We decided we should make this a contest and encourage people to actually get out there and visit these places that were local to them, so we partnered with the county’s Economic Development Department and they were able to put together a really great prize to encourage people to take part in this bingo-type of activity over the course of last summer,” added Rumble.
The prize was a Huron County weekend get-away and locations represented each municipality in the county and were chosen to make sure they were accessible and free for everyone to enjoy.
Rumble says she believes one of the reasons their project won the award was the level of collaboration that went into it, starting with another county department and then all the work with all of the local municipalities and the information they provided.
