“Utang na loob: a debt from within. From the heart. It is a debt you did not ask for and will never pay off but must always try to. It is gratitude for the ancestors who brought you into existence, for the family who raised you, for the community who helped you in ways direct and indirect, visible and invisible. It is acknowledgment that none of us are alone.”
― Randy Ribay, Everything We Never Had
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Everything We Never Had by Randy Ribay
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Escapist Reads
Wanting to get away? Try an escapist read! These books will take you on vacation to another time, place, or universe. The books listed below span different genres while all offering you readers a wide variety of escapes. Check out one and let us know what adventure you chose to go on. As of this writing, all of these titles are available at the Davenport Public Library. Descriptions are provided by the publishers.
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Love is a War Song by Danica Nava
“Love is not a perfect melody that only happens when all the right notes and rhythms present themselves. Love is a war song, a battle cry. Something to fight for. And I would fight for us.”
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Juneteenth Books for Children
Juneteenth, June 19th, marks the day in 1865 when Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, and announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in said state were free by executive decree. This came over two and a half years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
Below you will find a list of children’s books to celebrate Juneteenth. This is by no means a complete list of all the Juneteenth books available in our catalog and is instead a sampling of what we have. As of this writing, all of these titles are owned by the Davenport Public Library. Descriptions are provided by the publishers.
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Stepping through the glass doors into Special Collections
View of the Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center Welcome to our new blog! We are jointly sharing this blog with our colleagues in our Information Services department, as well as the rest of The Library. We are excited about the possibilities of collaboration on this new platform.
In our first blog post, I would like to invite our readers to visit the Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center, either in person or through our online resources.
In-person visitors will experience the new Special Collections! During the summer of 2025, the Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center moved into its new public service space on the 2nd floor of the Davenport Public Library at Main. This move has enabled us to be a more visible asset in The Library and to use our former area more effectively for collections storage.
In the year since, we have been helping individuals research their ancestors, their homes and buildings, businesses, and so much more.
We would like to highlight a few of our new additions and some of our favorite resources, which are continually updated.
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