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| My staff and I at the kick-off |
This month was... a lot. In some ways, it almost felt like starting over to plan summer reading and run the youth department from scratch again - except I'm a lot older, fatter, and with correspondingly less energy lol. Also, thankfully, I have amazing staff to help me out this time around!
We have had a LOT of traffic. In between frantically printing more of everything, I have been trying to keep track of which things we need to change next summer, how the spaces are being used, what's working, what's not working, and what we'll need to change going into the fall. Some things never change - evening programs, no matter how many people ask for them, do not do well for us and, despite my best efforts, I still need to scale back more in a number of areas. I had not anticipated being this busy.
I've been planning program details and ordering supplies the week before the programs themselves - I haven't done that in so many years I can't remember when I last did it! - and while it was necessary this summer due to the exigencies of the grant and renovation process and not knowing how things would work out in the new space, it definitely added to the stress and exhaustion.
One thing I did do this month that eased stress for me was to let go of some of the responsibility I was carrying for our shared consortium events. These performers are booked to visit every library in the consortium and I hold our events at the local middle school to coincide with summer school so my average attendance is ~200. In the past, I've really stressed myself trying to make sure everything fits the performer's needs, trying to help the teachers keep 200+ kids from kindergarten to 8th grade calm and attentive, and make sure I get things set up and taken down so I'm not interfering with the school schedule. This time I just... didn't. I told the school ahead of time what the performer needed, told the performer what to expect, and then just let things happen. It really was ok - sure, some performers weren't happy, but I couldn't have fixed those issues anyways. Mostly the school handled the set-up, the performers went with the flow, and honestly nothing was any worse than when I stressed myself out to try and control everything as well as constantly explain to the members of the public who joined that yes, it was a lot of kids, they could see the performer with a smaller audience at another library, I wasn't the person who booked the events and they weren't going to all be perfect for our venue and audience, etc.
I often have to stop and remind myself not to justify or explain things to patrons - "Thanks for your feedback, I'll consider it" is all one needs to say. I don't know that there's really an increase in people complaining that things are not perfectly suited specifically for their needs and those of their children, or of people who don't understand that I am planning and managing a department for everyone, not just for them, but it does feel like it sometimes.
In preparation for July (and August) I've canceled a couple programs - a drop-in family game night that had 0 attendees and a drop-in play group that was running concurrently with another event and had low attendance. I also adjusted the times of our STEAM activities to give us more time to clean up and reset the room, especially on Fridays. A single staff member opens the youth department Monday mornings and there's too much traffic to set up the program room. I also adjusted the teen events and volunteer opportunities for July. Some of them asked if we were going to do after hours events again and I told them no (what I SHOULD have said was "sure here's the budget, you plan it". I finally managed to put in some book orders and finish one major collection development project, but there are always more waiting.
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| My school colleague - we moved her family storytime to our community center. A good choice because she had 98 people, which certainly would not have fit in any of the youth spaces. |
