I had a lot of personal stuff going on this October - I was sick and my mom had major surgery at the end of the month. Other staff were out as well; since we are so short-staffed, any single person being out tends to have a catastrophic domino effect, which is exhausting. It's also been unseasonably warm with lots of weather changes, so I am going through most of this with ongoing sinus headaches. I am pretty grouchy right now.
Morning storytimes continue to be our most strongly attended programs, ranging from 20-60 people. We partner with the school district's Parent Connections outreach coordinator, who offers storytime alternatively at the library and the rec center weekly and one of my staff offers a second weekly morning storytime.
After a long break we resumed Paws to Read, where a volunteer from the local shelter visits with an animal and reads stories to the kids (sort of an opposite of a therapy dog program, which did not work for our library, no matter how many times I tried it). We usually get a pretty good attendance for this and we all like playing with the animals, so win-win.
The afternoon storytime two of our Board members were offering was cancelled, but we really weren't getting much, if any, attendance. Our attendance at Pokemon Hangout has also diminished. Ironically, people will come, see nobody is there, and leave, which means that the next person who comes sees nobody there and leaves and so on!
I've been offering STEAM activities - the ones on Monday morning earlier this fall got a decent turnout, but that wasn't sustainable since that's our busiest morning (other than storytime mornings) and only one staff member is available. I tried them on Wednesday morning, as a homeschool hangout, but that has not been successful.
Teen attendance has petered off and my attempts to have teens staff the Create Space as volunteers were a failure. The few times teens showed up, no patrons showed up, because without being sure the teens would show up I couldn't advertise it, and so on....
This all sounds very bleak, but we are actually busier than ever. Circulation continues to increase, traffic is brisk, and I am forming new partnerships to use the space. It's just that a lot of what we're doing now is difficult to quantify in the way that you can count programs and attendance.
Because of... everything, I'm going to slow things down through the end of the year. I am waiting for a lot of things to enable me to plan the next few months and the next year, like budgets, so we are just going to offer a few basic programs and keep steadily plugging away at projects and tasks while I focus on redoing schedules and continuing to pivot our services to match the community's needs next year.
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