About a year and a half ago, we here at Anythink set on a course to create at least 12 "Experience Zones" a year at each library location. An Experience Zone is a place/space in the library where our guests could engage with information, learn something new, do something hands-on and hopefully leave with something tangible. With that prompt, I came up with the idea to create a space where our customers could take a pay-it-forward act of kindness token in order to increase happiness throughout our community. The idea grew from there and for about six weeks, a conference room at Anythink Wright Farms was turned into the "Happiness Experience." It was great to see members of our community visiting the space regularly and engaging with all the materials. We received many great compliments how happy the space made people, and we were delighted to see happiness spread throughout the community. Then, we were asked by the Public Library Association to bring happiness on the road to Indianapolis for the PLA 2014 Conference. Wow! This little idea of sharing happiness in our community was spreading to a national conference! Now that's what I call spreading happiness.

So Anythink took Camp Happiness to the PLA 2014 Conference and shared happiness with other libraries and library workers from around the nation. We set up a temporary room in the exhibit hall and recreated our Happiness Experience. Our rethemed and renamed Experience Zone was a space where other librarians from around the nation could engage and interact with information all centered on the theme of happiness. Guests in the space encountered information to increase their immediate happiness, as well as inspirational materials such as books (donated by Better World Books) and bookmarks, which they could take in order to continue increasing their overall happiness. Scientific information about happiness was presented in a fun and engaging way, including aromatherapy and candy s'mores. (Yeah, now tell me that doesn’t make you happy!) Since many guests to the Camp Happiness space were from out of town, we gave them an opportunity to write a post card home – like sending a letter home from camp – to tell someone special how they make them happy.  

But my favorite part of the Camp Happiness exhibit was the way in which our guests were encouraged to spread happiness. Guests were given a wooden token with a pay-it-forward prompt, such as: give a compliment, share your space or help hold the door. Guests were encouraged to complete these tasks and then pass the wooden token on so that happiness would continue to spread beyond the conference doors. It was a delight to see people return to the Camp Happiness room for another wooden nickel so they could pay forward another good deed. 

Many studies have concluded that when people focus on others and make sacrifices for them – whether that be of time, space or money – they not only increase others' happiness but their own as well. It's no wonder people returned for more wooden tokens! With each good deed they performed, they not only helped spread happiness but increased their own, too.

It was so much fun to share Anythink's idea of a participatory space with other librarians and to see their happiness increase before our very eyes. We received so many compliments about how great the space was and that it did, in fact, make them feel happy just by being in it. Some were already making plans to recreate a version of this concept in their own libraries. And to that we say: Yay! Happiness continues to spread. How great is that?

Others reacted with even more emotion, some even with tears in their eyes because they were so moved by the positivity of the whole experience.

Vendors and library workers alike began to visit Camp Happiness simply because of the happiness buzz they were hearing on the exhibit floor. Once they experienced the space, they often made comments about how great it would be to share this information and experience with their co-workers.  And still the happiness spreads!

For me, I see this whole happiness experience as one big pay-it-forward. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in it and the return increase of happiness I have received in the process has been huge – I mean huge. I'm still on cloud nine after PLA and I can't wait to start hearing about how other libraries have spread happiness within their own communities.