What we are doing
Hopefully everything goes as planned and, as you are reading this, we are preparing to open the lobby on May 18th; I mentioned this in last week’s bookworm. Our goal is to have 2 laptops for card catalogs to checkout items and 2 laptops for patron use in replacement of the public computers. 2 + 2 = 4, yep, 4 at a time in the lobby. Checkout will still be handled by us, as in we do your shopping. The lobby gate door will be lowered, but a staff member will be on the other side to help you. We would encourage you to call and schedule laptop time. We are restricting laptop usage to 15 minutes. All laptops will be cleaned after patron use.
We will not do new library cards, copies, or faxes until we enter phase 5 and allow limited library entry beyond the lobby. You can print from the lobby laptops, but we will not allow access to the copy machine for other copies. We are quarantining check in materials for the safety of our staff and our patrons. Making new cards, copies and faxes does not allow for the time required for quarantine. Again, I know this is not ideal. Remember that we still offer eCards. We have added just shy of 60 new patrons with eCards since “closing”. ECards give access to all of our digital resources; OverDrive, Hoopla, World Book Online, Pronunciator, Ancestry (from home temporarily), TumbleBooks, CreativeBug, Audio, Romance and Teen Book Cloud (temporary).
Did you catch the new one?
CreativeBug is our new digital resource offered through Joann, yep, as in, what I will always know as, Joann’s Fabrics. CreativeBug offers online video arts and crafts workshops and techniques. Learn how to paint, knit, crochet, sew, screen print, and more. I am pretty excited about this resource; we have been working on adding it since the Covid nightmare started.
You have probably started noticing that more cars are in the staff parking lot. When we first “closed” we allowed 1 staff in the building. We are gradually increasing those numbers. If you are wondering what we are doing refer to my past bookworm about staff jobs. Work is similar, minus patron entry. We are still doing curbside, but checkout has decreased, so that part of our job really is the biggest difference. No worries, we are still busy. We have finished our first step of inventory and are in the second stage of evaluating our collection. We have even proceeded to some weeding. It is also a perfect time to shuffle the collection, we are the closest to “full” that we can be. I really like my shelves to look nice, and you can find me with my ruler in the stacks satisfying my desire for order.
The biggest amount of time, for me, has been spent on figuring out the logistics of running the library during this time and creating protocol and procedure to help staff meet the new demands of closing in parenthesis. As in “Pandemic Protocol”, that includes 6 phases and is 11 pages long. We have also had 3 meetings to plan Summer Reading Program, and, yep, you guessed it, there will be protocol and procedure developed for it too. Modifications have already been developed to update our flyers. I will give you more information next week, but will let you know now that we will start online registration for SRP on May 20th.
So, we are doing things here at the library and yes it feels just as awkward and disjointed as this bookworm.
Upcoming Events: Shared Story Time at 10:30am, Monday – Friday, Story Time with our Brittany on Wednesday and Saturday at 10:00am, Wild Robot story with Brenda every night at 5:00pm, Fitness Challenge at 8:00am, Monday – Friday, Creative Fun at 3:00pm, Monday – Friday, and Writing/Reading Time at 6:00pm, Monday – Friday