This week at the library; or, It doesn't look like I'll be breathing this side of August

Remember last week? Wash, add more programs, plus staff meetings and meetings at City Hall, rinse, repeat.

Programs

• Monday evening, Tiny Tots - Miss P. was stuck up north and couldn't get back, had to cancel. Much sorrow but we survived.
• Tuesday morning, new staff member L did toddler storytime for Miss P. I am working on getting some  more staff comfortable with subbing - it's hard to work with a toddler group that doesn't know you, especially with the love for Miss P, but L did a good job for a first time!
• Tuesday afternoon, Fancy Nancy party. Oooooh what a party! To prep for this, it's mostly collecting stuff here and there, publicity, etc. It's the day of that's a real workout! It took us exactly an hour and a half to set up. 10 minutes before we started, I noticed a couple families were poking their heads in, so I shut the doors so we could finish setting up. Opened them 10 minutes later and there was about 100 people in the lobby! We counted 120 at one point but more came - we're going with a total of 135. We had two tables of fancy books and over half checked out. We had hundreds of butterfly masks with large sticks to tape them to, sparkles, gems, ribbons, feathers, stickers, buttons, crayons and markers. We had clips with fancy paper, ribbon, buttons, glue dots, clips, and clothespins. We had fancy fans with fancy paper and ribbons. At the last minute I decided to go with tissue paper flowers on pipe cleaners instead of beading. We had tons of glitter glue everywhere. We had mini pink cupcakes and frosting and sprinkles to decorate with along with pink lemonade. It was awesome. It took over two hours to clean up (with the help of my aide). But it was awesome!
• Wednesday morning, Preschool Interactive - good start back for the summer session. More people will come in July when the first session of summer school ends.
• Thursday morning (at the icky hour of 8am), pre-kindergarten storytime. Five groups of about 20 kids each, back to back elephant storytimes! My voice actually held out to the end, although I did get a bit growly.
• Thursday morning, baby storytime - Miss P.'s fans were happy to welcome her back!
• Thursday afternoon, Lego Club - Good thing we set up all the tables - 65 people came and I had to bring out more tables. Now I'm wondering if I got enough pots for Messy Art next week!
• Friday morning, toddler storytime - again, much excitement for Miss P's return. The new storytime room organization seems to be working well.

Stories of the week

• Adult svs librarian (via chat my morning off): "help! parent has child who wants scary stories at 1000+ lexile!" Me: "Tell them it's summer - read whatever scary stories they want."
• Aide called me right before we closed to view disturbing situation in juvenile series. Very oddly shelved and out of order. Was it the new aide? Did we not train her well? *panic* Er...no, it was a helpful little girl earlier that I had noticed was pushing all the books back (kids often like to do this and I don't really care) but I hadn't noticed her "tidying" the series. Once I took a second look it was clear what she'd done - she'd collected all the loose series and pushed them together so the shelves were exactly full, then put all the pink books together. Cute, but now we have to reshelve everything. Oh well.
• We acquired a fish tank last Saturday, courtesy of a local teen who has recently gotten into fish. He set up the acquarium, brought the fish, and is keeping a close eye on it. A few days ago, he noticed some kids were tapping on the filter and glass, so the tank now bears a handwritten sign reading "do not touch tank management". He came in Thursday to "make sure we're feeding the fish". 

More Notes

• As of Friday early afternoon, about 160 kids had returned the first week's bookmark. Last year 878 kids registered and 187 completed 10 hours of reading. We're very close to that "completion" number. I'm hoping to hit at least 300 participants this summer.
• As chaotic as this summer is, I had to look back at last summer to remember how much better this year is going. The summer reading program is much less labor-intensive, our system did a lot of printing for us which saved money, and I'm doing fewer programs. The intensive organization I put together this year doesn't hurt either!