Upcoming Events
4 PM - 6 PM
Libraries are more than reading: lifelong learning is also making and doing! Join fellow yarn enthusiasts once a month on the first Wednesday of the month from 4-6 pm at the State Library, located at the Forum Building, Main Reading Room, 607 South Drive, Harrisburg for a maker time of stitching, knitting, crocheting, felting, and camaraderie! Show off your new project and share inspiration with one another.
State Employee Fiber Arts Club Registration. Questions? Email ra-makerspace@pa.gov or call 717-783-5993.
In 2018-2020, the Commonwealth Monument Project launched a "Look Up, Look Out" campaign to reimagine Harrisburg's Old Eighth Ward, the multi-ethnic neighborhood demolished from the 1910s to install the buildings and green space of the State Capitol Complex. The campaign was designed to draw attention to a once-thriving neighborhood that now teems with government workers and those associated with the everyday business of the capital city. Using a combination of historical research and digital tools, a group of local historians, change agents, technologists, and faculty and students of area universities identified 12 sites throughout the various buildings of the Capitol Complex to place posters that told the varied stories of the vanished neighborhood. These posters are now on display at the State Library Main Reading Room, in the heart of the Old Eighth Ward.
Visitors to Pennsylvania’s capitol district are invited to stop, look up, look out, and imagine a thriving neighborhood that once existed before the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania appropriated the grounds a century ago for state use. View the exhibit and download a walking tour map at the State Library reading room on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 10 AM – 6 PM.
“America’s First Equality Governor: Gov. Milton Shapp’s LGBTQ+ Initiatives” is a new exhibit by the the LGBT Center of Central Pennsylvania that chronicles the remarkable pioneering efforts of Pennsylvania Governor Milton Shapp in the mid-1970s to provide protections from discrimination for state employees, students and faculty of state universities, employees of companies holding state contracts and much more. His achievements were truly ground-breaking, earning him our title of “America’s First Equality Governor.”
View the exhibit through July 31 during the State Library Reading Room hours - Tuesday through Thursday 10-6, at the Forum Building, 607 South Drive, Harrisburg.
Date: June 24, 2025
Time: 12 Noon – 1 PM
June is Gun Violence Awareness Month
About the book: In a world where fiction meets the harsh reality of our times, a group of ten eclectic authors unveils American Roulette, a blockbuster thriller that takes readers on a suspenseful journey through the lives of diverse characters whose paths intersect at the site of a mass shooting at a local mall. Through meticulous storytelling and vivid character development, American Roulette transcends the boundaries of genre, offering readers a powerful exploration of gun violence, its aftermath, and the continuing challenge it poses to our nation. According to the Gun Violence Archive, the number of mass shootings in the United States has nearly doubled in the past five years, with the 647 mass shootings in 2022 resulting in 673 deaths and 2,700 injuries.
About the authors: A concern for the increasing scourge of gun violence in America brought together ten collaborators to write American Roulette. Most are award winners. All are standouts in their field. They write for every genre—novels, nonfiction, kids lit, academic publications, journalism—one wrote for broadcast, and several have blogs. When this varied group isn’t writing, they are teaching, leading congregations, troubleshooting, reporting the news, running businesses, traveling, and inspiring others to believe in themselves. Together, Pat LaMarche, Sherry Knowlton, J.M. West, Matthew Best, Robert Bradshaw, Phyllis Orenyo, Andy Carey, and James Dodds (with an introduction by Cheryl Woodruff Brooks and Cheryl Dunn Bychek serving as creative consultant) agreed to create a narrative and donate their time. The author earnings from the book sales, regardless of form—electronic, audio, or paper—will be donated to nonprofit organizations that address gun violence in the United States via The Charles Bruce Foundation, a 501(c)3 charitable organization that supports the arts and those who make them.
Want to learn more about gun violence? Take a few minutes to visit Souls Shot – an art installation at the Forum Building Lobby and State Library Main Reading Room, Tuesday – Thursday 10-6.
Date: June 25, 2025
Time: 12 Noon - 1 PM
Are you fascinated by archaeology and prehistory? Mark Weaver will discuss time periods and their respective tool industries, types of tools, and the presumed hominins who made them. You will see and learn about actual stone tools, fossils, and casts of various hominin skulls. Methods of toolmaking will be analyzed and compared, ranging from core and flake, single and biface, types of hammer stones, and hafting. Finally, tool raw materials will be discussed, from quartz, quartzite, and volcanic stone, to non-stone tools, primarily wood and bone.
Mark A. Weaver is an architect by profession, a student of evolution, fossils, and paleoanthropology by passion, and a writer by default. His first novel, “Lucy Lives” (2015), imagined the life of Lucy, a 3.2 million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis, whose fossil remains were discovered in 1974. After ‘Lucy,’ he became fascinated with the era of a million years later, when three or more different hominin species coexisted. He wondered what it might be like to meet and interact with others different from oneself, and began to conceive his second novel, “Roads To Humanity.” Three fossil skulls inspired the characters—Australopithecus africanus, Paranthropus aethiopicus, and Homo habilis. Because they hailed from remote regions the story became part road novel, earning its title along the way. A principal theme is the dawn of technology and culture, as discoveries are made and then shared—sometimes willingly! Weaver is currently working on a new book, “Homo Rising,” about the Turkana Boy, a 1.5 million-year-old nearly complete Homo erectus skeleton found in 1984. It tells of erectus’s many accomplishments and inventions, including perhaps the most important one: the development of language.
Date: June 26, 2025
Time: 12 Noon – 1 PM
Once almost wiped from the world, poliomyelitis, or polio, stands to undergo a resurgence, due to anti-vaccine attitudes in the Western world and a lack of resources in the developing world. Join us to hear about the history of this disease, the battle against it, and the future of the illness.
Book Club
Date: July 22, 2025
Time: 12 Noon to 1PM
Book: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
About the Book Club: The State Library of Pennsylvania hosts a quarterly lunchtime book club open to state employees as well as to the public. The book club meets in the format of a virtual meeting. Attendees take part in conversations about the book moderated by staff at the State Library of Pennsylvania. Share thoughts about the characters, plot, setting, and impact of the book with others who have read the book or any part of it.
About the book: Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.
About the author: Barbara Kingsolver was born in 1955 and grew up in rural Kentucky. She earned degrees in biology from DePauw University and the University of Arizona and has worked as a freelance writer and author since 1985. At various times she has lived in England, France, and the Canary Islands, and has worked in Europe, Africa, Asia, Mexico, and South America. She spent two decades in Tucson, Arizona, before moving to southwestern Virginia where she currently resides.
- This book may be borrowed from many Pennsylvania public libraries. State employees may borrow from the State Library through EZBorrow.
- Please register for Book Club to participate.
Lunch and Learn Programs
The State Library of Pennsylvania offers Lunch and Learn programs. These programs are typically free, open to the public, and held at the State Library or virtually via on online platform between noon and 1 p.m.
If you missed a program or want to experience it again, see below for recordings from recent programs.
If you have a question about the Lunch and Learn program contact community engagement librarian Ellen Shenkat ellshenk@pa.gov.
Upcoming Programs
Recent Programs
Visit our Lunch and Learn YouTube playlist to explore recordings of more than 40 Lunch and Learn sessions.
Date: April 9, 2025
Time: 12 Noon - 1 PM
Are you interested in writing or illustrating children’s books? Author Margaret Peterson and Illustrator Cheryl Bielli share their story with you.
About the author and illustrator:
Margie Peterson grew up in Ramsey, N.J., the daughter of two writers. She graduated from the University of Maryland with a bachelor’s degree in English and worked in journalism in Washington, D.C. and Pottsville, PA before settling with her husband in Salisbury Township, outside Allentown, PA. She toiled in newspapers while raising two children and later became a freelance writer. The Boy Who Never Threw Anything Out is her first book.
Cheryl Bielli is an artist, illustrator and art teacher who was born and raised in Erie, PA and now lives in Peck Lake, NY. She works in a variety of two- and three-dimensional media, including graphite, charcoal, pastel, acrylic, oil and watercolor paint, clay, wood, papier mâché, cloth and mixed media. She operates a small, commissioned art business, Mrs. B's Petite Galerie & Studio, and her illustrations have been published in a national tabloid in Florida and trade and regional periodicals in Western NY. Illustrations for The Boy Who Never Threw Anything Out (2022) have led to illustrating contracts for children's books with three additional authors: Henry Didn't Listen (2023), and I Love My Heart and M. Oiseau, both seeking publication in 2025.
About their book:
"The Boy Who Never Threw Anything Out" is a children’s book about a packrat named Tommy who becomes trapped in his bedroom because he can't bear to part with his old stuffed animals, books and toys - even the broken ones - and they pile up around him. In rhyming prose, Tommy's parents help him realize the solution lies in donating toys and clothes to others and recycling what can't be reused. The story teaches important lessons in giving and sustainability with humor and wacky, over-the-top scenes. Colorful, comical illustrations will delight children and charm adults, especially those with their own packrat in the family. A hidden-picture page at the end allows readers to find concealed objects among Tommy's clutter.
"The Boy Who Never Threw Out Anything" (YouTube)
Date: March 12, 2025
Time: 12 Noon – 1 PM
Join the State Library in a virtual program about Pennsylvania folklore with author Jeffrey Frazier. Jeffrey R. Frazier, born and raised in Centre Hall, Centre County, holds a BS from Penn State and an MBA from Rider University. Growing up in a “Tom Sawyer” sort of way, he has always loved the Pennsylvania mountains and has collected their folktales and legends for over fifty years, starting in 1970. He self-published them in a series of eight volumes titled Pennsylvania Fireside Tales. Since the tales often sound “far-fetched” today, the author takes on the role of an investigative reporter to explore their origins, writing in a format that the average reader can enjoy.
In 2024 he became a published author when Sunbury Press in Harrisburg came out with his three-volume series titled Pennsylvania Mountain Landmarks – an armchair journey to some of the most unusual and inaccessible landmarks in the Pennsylvania mountains and the history and legends that surround them. Sunbury Press published expanded and improved versions of all eight volumes of the author’s Pennsylvania Fireside Tales series and of his Pennsylvania Fireside Ghost Tales.
"Pennsylvania Mountain Landmarks" (YouTube)
Date: February 26, 2025
Time: 12 Noon - 1 PM
In 2018-2020, the Commonwealth Monument Project launched a "Look Up, Look Out" campaign to reimagine Harrisburg's Old Eighth Ward, the multi-ethnic neighborhood demolished from the 1910s to install the buildings and green space of the State Capitol Complex. The campaign was designed to draw attention to a once-thriving neighborhood that now teems with government workers and those associated with the everyday business of the capital city. Using a combination of historical research and digital tools, a group of local historians, change agents, technologists, and faculty and students of area universities identified 12 sites throughout the various buildings of the Capitol Complex to place posters that told the varied stories of the vanished neighborhood. These posters will be on display at the State Library Main Reading Room, in the heart of the Old 8th ward.
We invite visitors to Pennsylvania’s capitol district to stop, look up, look out, and imagine a thriving neighborhood that once existed before the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania appropriated the grounds a century ago for state use. Visit the State Library reading room exhibition to explore the Eighth Ward. The Main Reading Room hours are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 10 AM – 6 PM.
The State Library's virtual Lunch and Learn program will host a presentation from the creators of the exhibition and public humanities students of Messiah University to discuss the original campaign and the new digital resources available for exploring the lost neighborhood in the shadow of the state capitol.
"Look Up, Look Out" Event (YouTube)
Date: December 18, 2024
Time: 12 Noon - 1 PM
Pioneer, patriot, politician...
John Harris Jr. was a true visionary in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania-during a time in history when taking a risk meant putting your life on the line. He proudly took bold steps in supporting monumental changes that now define history. His legacy is strong in Pennsylvania, but his story has never been told, until now.
Visionary Road to the Capital sheds light on Harris' journey-filled with both tragedies and triumphs-during life on the frontier. While his name doesn't stand out amongst other influencers during that era, like Washington or Jefferson, Harris' life is woven into the fabric of America's birth. He funded and supported the cause for freedom and took brave measures to secure the land that would eventually become Pennsylvania's capital city, Harrisburg. (Amazon)
Dave Biser is pastor of CrossPoint Church in Harrisburg, and president of the Historical Society of Dauphin County.
"Visionary Road to the Capital" (YouTube)
Date: November 6, 2024
Time: 12 Noon – 1 PM
About the book:
In 1939, a native-born Polish and Belarusian citizen embarked on a journey to save his Motherland from destruction by the Nazi regime. First as an air defense sergeant credited with disrupting the first raid of Warsaw and then as an agent with the Soviet NKVD, Sergei Bravo’s young life is one series of battles after another. Trusted for assignment with the Kovpak partisans in Ukraine, Sergei is faced with the ultimate test: Save the medieval city of Krakow from destruction as the Nazi’s are chased from eastern Europe and the Red Army begin its race to Berlin.
Based on true events, this is a captivating story, with ties to modern day events. A tale of global conflict, espionage, genocide, and the test of one’s loyalty to their homeland. This tale follows the tradition of John le Carre and Alan Furst novels. (from author’s website: K.R. Kiehl - Fiction Writer | K.R. Kiehl (authorkrkiehl.com)
About the author:
K.R. Kiehl is an American writer of historical fiction and short stories. He is relatively new to creative fiction but has over 25 years’ experience writing and publishing in academic and research journals. K.R. Kiehl is a retired military officer, college professor, and state government executive. He began his creative writing journey as a Creative Entrepreneur Accelerator Program grantee from The Foundation on Enhancing Communities. His work has been published in The Bluebird Word, Fan Story, and Prentice Hall.
"Saving Krakow: A Novel" Event (YouTube)