Jean Little Library: This week at the library; or, It's a circus here!

Programs

Coffee, Kids, 'n' Conversation (Pattie)
Toddlers 'n' Books (2 sessions) (Pattie)
Circus party
Books 'n' Babies (Pattie)
School visit - parochial school
Mad Scientists Club: Bridge Science
Smitty and Mary G., musical performance

Random Commentary

My new cushions came! These replace our old beanbags and I've been waiting since last year for them to arrive! Almost as exciting was the massive box they arrived in *gloat*
The circus party was huge and insane. It will take me some weeks to fully recover. All programs hereafter shall be measured against this bar - we had to call the police because our program was messing up traffic (well, parking, but still...) and they were like "hey you should tell us when you're planning something this big" and we were like "omg we didn't expect 300 people!" although...we had about 200 last year so....yeah, next year somebody's going to get stuck directing traffic and parking (it's not going to be me. there are probably people still trapped in the fields of Illinois from my short and ill-fated career as a parking attendant for football games)
I spent the rest of the week catching up on webinars and planning programs for the rest of the spring, and trying to catch up on stuff - working on Neighborhoods, cleaning out my desk, etc. I think I'm going to focus the rest of this year specifically on collection development for the Neighborhoods, which means picture books in the subject areas and nonfiction at all levels, since I'm doing major weeding/replacing as I grow. Next year (or when I finish) I'll work on completing all our juvenile series.
I remembered at the last minute that I scheduled a school visit from a parochial school at 9am on Thursday! They're the last parochial school left in town (the Catholic school closed) and they brought their 1st/2nd grade combined class, about 17 kids. I did a tour and read a couple books, then they were able to make masks and browse and check out books.
Smitty and Mary G. are a music program that we had last year - retired music teachers, very affordable, and so much fun! They're wonderful ladies and so nice to do this for us - it's a very low-stress, relaxing program. All the kindergarteners from one of our elementary schools came (which I was super thrilled about since I don't do much with that school and want to change that) plus a couple families so we had about 80 people.
Happy moment of the week. One of our regular patrons brought in a family from Thailand that they are hosting. The little girl is trying to learn English and I showed them several different easy readers they thought she might like, Disney Princesses, etc. Then, as she looked over at the new book stand, her face lit up and she started talking excitedly to her mom - she'd seen a cat book and she loves cats. Of course, that's the juvenile shelf and the chapter book was too hard. I raced around like crazy and found some of Schaefer's Mittens books for her. She gasped in surprised delight, and was even more excited when I opened it and showed her that it was super easy to read. Super librarian strikes again!
This was an exhausting, but fun and fulfilling week! My feet hurt though. So I'm just going to hang out at home, do some collection development with a friend, and then we're going down to IL on Sunday to buy baby toys with some grant money (and visit Ikea. I need to finish the new design of my bedroom)
Webinars

Graphic Novel and Comic Collections for Teens (Infopeople)

I missed the first 10 minutes of this, but it felt much more directed towards schools. My teens just want manga and superhero comics, they don't care about understanding their inner struggles. Or anybody else's, as far as I can tell. I can see how it would be useful if we had someone focusing on building teen programs - there were some interesting apps profiled

Creating Eye-catching and readable flyers and brochures

I wish I'd had this webinar 6 years ago, when I started! I've learned most of this through trial and error, but it's good to be reminded. I'm gradually getting a more uniform design for my flyers and marketing and doing more intentional marketing and not just spraying pictures and paper everywhere.

Circus Party Set-up (I actually got very few pictures because I was running around frantically most of the time and large herds of people crammed into small spaces doesn't really make for good photo ops)