Library U

If you're cold, they're cold. Don't forget about the critters this winter! Join us for some DIY gardening projects that will help your native wildlife weather the season (and prepare for the coming spring). Learn these tips and more from Master Gardeners and our friends at the UF Extension Office! Plus, there's another "Entrepreneurship Basics" workshop with our partners at EY. Measure your entrepreneurial mindset for FREE at the Library!

Nat Glover was born in 1943, in segregated Jacksonville, Florida. At seventeen, he unknowingly headed into an angry white mob and the Ku Klux Klan attacking young black protestors staging a sit-in at a downtown whites-only lunch counter. Known as “Ax Handle Saturday,” this harrowing encounter with racism would commit him to a lifetime of fighting for justice. He joined the Jacksonville Police Department in 1966 where he was promoted to detective, rose to sergeant, and was appointed the city’s first hostage negotiator. In 1995, Duval County voters elected him the first Black sheriff in Florida since Reconstruction. Hear more about his incredible work and his new memoir, Striving for Justice: A Black Sheriff.

In November, we're thinking about "Black Friday" and how you can leverage it and other big shopping days this holiday season to boost your retail sales. What deals are you offering at your small business? Are you offering your products for sale online? Are you promoting your small business during Small Business Saturday? With free resources from the Library, you can learn everything from how to build a small business website with Shopify or how to start a side hustle by selling on Amazon or Etsy. We also have some community partners offering some great workshops for anyone thinking of starting up a new business!

Released in 1926, The Flying Ace was a classic silent film that featured an all-African-American cast, with principal photography shot right here in Jacksonville. Made in the South during a period that arguably represented the height of "Jim Crow," it was one of many films by white filmmaker Richard E. Norman that challenged the stereotypes about Black people found in the overwhelming majority of the films of that era. In 2021, The Flying Ace was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

If you plan to come out of National Novel Writing Month with a ready-to-publish manuscript (or you just want to plan your next steps), join us at Writer's Lab in December for a hands-on how-to session with Mike Messier. He will instruct you, step-by-step, on how to write and publish fiction and nonfiction on Kindle Vella & Amazon KDP. If you bring your finished manuscript, you could even leave with a published book!

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Have you been planning and plotting your first novel? Or maybe you've been hoping to craft the next great American novel by the seat of your pants? Whether you're a plotter or pantser starting your first draft or you have a completed manuscript ready to go, the Library has some great workshops coming up that can help you cross the finish line to publication!

We start out the month with a Lit Chat Interview with local author, Tim Gilmore. He's written 22 books and even cofounded the Jax-by-Jax Literary Arts Festival. There are also free Writer's Lab workshops starting in November and continuing into early December that are focused on revising your first draft and then self-publishing the polished final product through Kindle Vella and Amazon KDP.

Fall is finally showing up in Jacksonville! Are you prepping for all those extra hours of darkness by building your to-be-read list? It'll be dark by 6 p.m. before you know it! You might also consider joining a Library Book Club! You'll get to talk about what you loved, what surprised you, and what you'd recommend for anyone looking for something similar. Of course, our librarians can recommend read-alikes too!

Book clubs are one of the best ways to discover what other people are reading (and what they think about the books everyone else is reading).

Looking for ways to increase your property value? Want to spruce up your home's exterior? Not sure how to prep your yard for winter? Learn everything you need for a successful, all-season yard from Master Gardeners and our friends at the UF Extension Office! Or get entrepreneurship basics and more from our partners at EY at a Life Lit workshop this November!

So you've finished writing a draft of a novel (or perhaps you're nearing the finish line). What comes next? Join writer Hurley Winkler to learn about novel revision tactics. You'll walk away with a stronger revision plan for your book-length project as well as renewed energy and inspiration.

It's fall, y'all! With October comes cooler temperatures and probably thoughts of pumpkin spice pancakes and muffins! It's fitting then, that this month, we were able to speak with the owners of Cool Moose Café, a Riverside staple since the summer of 1998. They talk about what it's like owning a business and what advice they'd give to their fellow entrepreneurs.