Digital Events Year in Review: Fingal Libraries 2020

A big part of our service at Fingal Libraries is to provide stories, crafts, and special events to the public. When the first lockdown was introduced in March 2020, Fingal Libraries quickly moved its services online to create content over the course of the year. While we very much miss being able to provide these services in-person to our wonderful patrons, we were happy to make them available for free online for all to enjoy. These are some highlights of our special events from 2020. To see our full range of what we have to offer, please visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel 

We had some amazing guest authors in 2020. Check out Sam Hannigan's Woof Week read by the author, Alan Nolan here

Fingal Library staff also read some great stories over the year, including some for our annual Spring Into Storytime. Here is just one example to be enjoyed: Mr Worry by Roger Hargreaves, read by Norma from Swords Library here

Barry from Blanchardstown Library created a four-part online photography course: Start with Part 1: The Exposure Triangle here

Raquel from Malahide Library created a series of virtual Multilingual Storytelling sessions. The series included stories and songs told in English, Spanish, Polish, Dutch, Italian, and more! Start with Session 1, My Mummy and Me here

We had many Healthy Ireland events, including mindfulness sessions with Orlaith O'Sullivan. Try this short practice called Catch Happy here

Since travel was limited during 2020, it was a wonderful opportunity to learn more about other countries. Barry from Blanchardstown Library hosted interviews with individuals from different countries in his Ask Europe series. Watch this video, where you can learn all about Italy with Susanna here

Staying inside was a great opportunity to take up new hobbies. We learned how to paint a lot of new things in the series Painting with John Carpenter. Try your hand at painting this moonlight scene here

Focusing on fitness was also important during 2020. Try this beginner's Kundalini Yoga session with Enda from Fingal Libraries here

2020 was also a time to take care of our mental health and wellbeing. Fingal Libraries provided several special events by speakers like Fiona Hall, Michael Ryan, Jill Barrett, and Rita O'Donovan covering topics such as resilience, anxiety, mindfulness, stress, and worry. Try this session by Fiona Hall on Managing Anxiety and Identifying Triggers here

For Summer Stars, Author and Journalist Maeve Devoy created a series of creative writing videos for children ages 8-12. The first session can be found here

For the Write Time Festival, Nessa O'Mahony discussed Fingal's local writers and poets and shared some of their work here

For the Fingal Festival of History, we learned all about the Sack of Balbriggan, the War of Independence, and Molly Adrien. In this talk, Jim Walsh gave a retrospective view of the Sack of Balbriggan here

During Science Week, we enjoyed virtual science workshops by the Rediscovery Centre where we learned about acids and bases, and were shown how to make a hoop airplane experiment here.

For Christmas, we had a wide variety of stories and crafts. Rasa from Malahide Library showed us how to make some beautiful snowflakes for Christmas in Family Time at Your Library here