Harry Potter madness!
Indeed, this was the weekend of Harry Potter. Devotees lined up at bookstores everywhere to pick up their copies at midnight. Many readers stayed up all night and then some reading the book, sometimes only stopping for food and bathroom breaks. “NO SPOILERS!” signs are popping up on blogs and discussion forums all over the web, for those who are taking the slow and scenic route, savoring every last moment of the final chapter in the story.
Public libraries were right there with the fans to celebrate the 7th canon. The Allen County Public Library coordinated a huge evening chock full of activities and music at their new library on Library Plaza, which you can read about care of the Fort Wayne News-Sentinal online (they also have a listing on their home page in the scrolling news graphics for a house elf clothing drive, which is very clever). Thanks to All Things Web 2.0 for the tip via your post! You can also peruse their entire photo set devoted to the party on Flickr.
By the looks of several Flickr photostreams, there were lots of libraries that had a really good time Friday night:
- Olds Municipal Library (Canada): Dumbledore, book reading, trivia, and more
- Kettleston Memorial Library (Alaska): potion mixing, quiz by Professor Trelawney, prophecy reading, and more
- Rancho Cucamonga Public Library (California): the “storm,” house elves, Hagrid, and more
You can also see library events on YouTube. Wellesley Free Library (Massachusetts) had quite the celebration, and you can see it all edited up quite nicely into 4m30s by video blogger Wellesley Townsman (a.k.a. Brad Reed). In a play on the epilogue of the book, you can watch Harry’s future as a library employee at the Hays Public Library (Kansas) battling the evils of vending machine vandalism and book theft.
I leave you with a video of the magical 2 minutes at the Land O’ Lakes branch of the Pasco County Libraries (Florida), when they opened the box at midnight:
Did your library have an event on Friday night? Post links to your photos, videos, articles, and more in the comments on this post! And, don’t forget a link to your library’s web site. 
There are 6 Comments to "Harry Potter madness!"
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Thank you for writing out the Allen County Public Library! The community of Fort Wayne, Indiana is very proud of our library and we thank them for all the wonderful things they do.
Here is a video of when the doors opened. It is a very sped up version of part of the people entering the ACPL when the doors opened at 9pm. The actual time it took just for the people who were waiting for the doors to open to get in was 10 minutes. I can’t imagine how many people that must have been. And of course, many more arrived during the evening.
Fortunately there were a lot of activities taking place on the Library Plaza (they started at 8pm) as well as inside. There was a band playing, games for the kids including the spiderweb maze, potions classes, costume shows and I believe there was even Potter Bingo.
Anyway, here is my video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3nxu7Oaduw
~Susan Mellott
We held our event at Faribault’s Buckham Memorial Library earlier in the day last Friday, but it was no less fun (and certainly better-attended than it would have been for us at midnight). The planning and decorations were mostly done by our Young Adults Helping Out group, overseen by Children’s Librarian Delane James.
Susan: Thank you so much for sharing the link to your video. That was some queue of people! Must’ve gone around the block and then some.
Renee: Sounds like you guys did some great work. I can imagine it as a pre-party to all the other midnight madness that ensued on Friday. Do you have any photos or anything you can share? Perhaps a link on the library web site?
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Apologies for the exremely delayed reaction, but yes we posted a great set of photos on our Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/buckhamlibrary/sets/