This week at the library; or, Interrupted by the Holidays Part II

Random Commentary

• Another week with a chunk out of the middle. We're closed the 31st and the 1st. Still working on weeding (C's and D's and biographies and the 700s) and getting started on programs, ordering supplies, book orders, av orders (I'm taking over all the adult movies and no, there is not an innocent way to phrase that). Working on publicity, mostly just updating flyers. My aide came back at the end of the week and my second aide will be starting next week, but there was still quite a bit of shelving. Starting to look at the series, the last part of the juvenile portion of the new arrangement of the children's area.
• A look back at the year. 2013...wasn't bad. I scaled back a LOT from 2012, got a lot more realistic about what I could and couldn't do. I did pretty much everything I wanted to do - winter reading program, Mad Scientists Club, will be hiring a part-time assistant for next summer and got a 2nd aide, expanded outreach, and turned over more teen stuff to our cataloger. The new summer reading program went really well, and after hours and hours of discussion (We will probably all scream if we talk about it any more) I got most of my neighborhoods plan approved and most of the juvenile part of it completed. Looking forward to 2014, I'm not doing anything new for the spring or summer program-wise - everything planned through May (and the summer) is traditional programs. The more things I can put "annual" in front of, the happier I am! This year is going to be all about consolidation and completion.
• Projects for 2014
• Finish the juvenile series portion of the rearrangement. Write up a request to the Friends for money to move all the magazines to Magboxes, remove the magazine shelf and replace it with bag holders (expensive! but a staff member suggested retail like hangers, which might be cheaper?) and turn the toy bag shelf into the easy reader shelf (my director isn't wholly convinced on this one, but moving them will make ALL our low shelves available for the picture book/easy nonfiction neighborhoods)
• Start the Neighborhoods project in picture books. Planning to start with fairy tales (easy) and transportation/construction (not so easy).
• Use all the ideas I've been saving on Pinterest to refresh Preschool Interactive and add to my outreach storytimes. Change PI from the six early literacy skills to the five practices. Add new storytimes to my backlog.
• New We Explore series, based on the Eric Carle program I did last year, We Explore Art and Stories. For the spring I have lined up Eric Carle, Leo Lionni, and Melissa Sweet.
• Add outreach to our third elementary school.
• Increase marketing for summer reading and up our participation from 500 to...oh...something higher? I'm not sure how Super Readers will work out with the lack of passes, but I will probably have to go with fast food coupons. Part of the way I hope to do this is to institute a fine amnesty program for all kids up through 6th grade. I already have a limited read off your fines program, but this would just clear everything. I don't know if the staff and board will agree or not, but I'm going to give it a try!
• Interview, hire, and train a summer assistant. This is exciting and scary - our cataloger is going to help me interview. Look at me getting all supervisory and stuff!
• I'm thinking about switching our default storytime from 10am to 9:30am and adding a Mother Goose on the Loose program in the fall. So we would have Toddlers 'n' Books at 9:30 and 10:30 on Tuesday, MGOL at 9:30 and PI at 10:30 on Wednesday, Books 'n' Babies at...10s? 9:30? on Thursday, and We Explore at 10? 10:30? on selected Fridays.
• I want to finish my huge lexile project, making annotated and organized lists of leveled books. I've done 900 and 1000+, and am in the middle of 800. I'm hoping to have the summer assistant help with this. This is a VERY time-consuming project.
• I'm going to try for a Dollar General grant for summer reading, since most of my local sources have dried up and I can't be sure the Friends will have the $$ available.
• Wandering off into a more personal vein, I've only ever really made (and kept) one New Year's Resolution. Or no, I take that back. I've done two. In 2012 I resolved to Be Firm with salespeople and I have definitely kept that resolution. I have hung up on a lot of people and I do not regret it. In 2011 I resolved to Stop Working 10+ hour days and I pretty much stuck to that. I have projects, but not really resolutions. So...projects for 2014!
• Finish moving in. Yes, it's been two years. I moved a bunch of stuff around last fall and added some shelves and then never recovered and I'd never really put everything away to start with anyways.
• Reorganize and catalog all my books. I sort of just let this go, and then dumped everything in piles while I was reorganizing, and...yeah, it's time I went through everything again.
• Finish all my half-completed sewing, crocheting, and knitting projects. This includes the blanket, the hood, the modified log cabin design quilt, restuffing the tiger, fixing my bunny pillow, either finishing or turning into a quilt the shirt pattern I started on, the corduroy dress (which probably doesn't fit at this point anyways), and the muslin blouse that's going to be a pattern.
• Catalog or something my LP collection, currently sitting in giant piles on two of my four wooden Ikea chairs.
• Actually tend my garden this summer, instead of occasionally thinking "Huh, I really should water that..." as I race by. I have corn seeds for the communal garden too.
• Get my to be read and reviewed piles down to below 50, at least. I currently have 102 books (mostly galleys and review copies, but some purchased) on my shelf waiting to be read and reviewed, a misc. handful waiting to be reviewed, 180 books on my to read list, and 30 something on the to-read-but-i-haven't-found-them-anywhere-yet list. I want to clear out all this backlog and Start Clean (and then I'll probably do something crazy like try to review every book I own or something).
• Try out some new recipes from my cookbook collection. I collected a bunch of cookbooks last year, but haven't really done anything with them.