Let’s go digital with your Sint Maarten Library

Digital Storytime
This year PJL has embarked on a two-month-long awareness and focus on the importance of digitization for all target groups in the community. To give this important topic its due the PJL have organized a series of toddlers and students visits to the library and PJL staff visits to both the primary and the secondary schools.

During these visits, the staff will engage the different target groups and school children in story reading using digital devices. This interaction has as a long-term objective to encourage teachers to use their tablets and other digital devices during storytime and classroom instruction delivery and they will encourage them to log into the PJL online E-Books platform to access digital books.

Presentation on digitalization and its importance
The program this year will also include presentations on the role digitization plays in the educational development of the school life of students at the Sundial School. This opportunity to give this presentation will also have as objective to let the students know that the PJL is not only a place to come and borrow books and hang out but a place to use their phones and tablets to access the digital collection which they can have access to through their membership also.

Patrons and visitors visiting the library will also be encouraged to download the iSTEP App and enjoy our virtual exhibition of Sint Maarten’s history and artifacts using their mobile phones or any other device. They will learn more about and even experience the stories about salt mining, slavery, Emilio Wilson, and Rockland Estate all thanks to the collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth, and Sport.

PJL –AUC BODY SMAART “Community action day”
Another highlight in March in addition to the Digitization Buzz is this special invite that goes to parents, the schools, and the residents in the Belvedere and Lower Prince’s Quarter area to come out on Saturday, March 26, 2022, to our PJL-AUC annual COMMUNITY & HEALTH FUN DAY to be held at the Belvedere Library Satellite from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm, where the focus will be on teaching all participants ( age 3 to 16) about being BODY SMAART by ten or more of the American University Medical Students.

Senior citizen’s cyber classes
To top this all off the PJL has teamed up with the Reading Rainbow Foundation to re-introduce the Senior Citizens Cyber Classes after the shut down in 2020. The first cohort of the training will commence in April and last until June 2022 and will be available for approximately 8 seniors. Former participants can call the PJL on 542-2970 and ask for Ms. F.Housen or contact her via admin@sxmlibrary.org for information regarding the training. This collaborative program is made possible through an NRPB grant received by the Reading Rainbow Foundation with which they constructed a new classroom that is very accessible for our seniors and an upgrade of the internet connectivity which is sponsored by TELEM.

You can find us at W.A.J. Nisbeth Road#3 in Philipsburg, on the Hillside School Premises in Cay Hill, and the Belvedere Community Center premises in Belvedere. Or call us at +172 1 5422970.