This week at the library; or, Week 11 of the Pandemic

I'd like to start by injecting a personal note. Some years ago, I met a wonderful woman named Lena Yarger Verkuilen, when she came to do children's programs at my library with the Welty Environmental Center. She has a passion for libraries, children, outdoors, and books and after she moved on from the Welty Center we remained friends. She remained a strong supporter and participant in her local library, we enjoyed trading book recommendations, and she was always ready to identify birds and plants for me! She has a wonderful sense of humor and is just an awesome person. In March she suffered the onset of severe health issues and although she is, thankfully, on the road to recovery, her family still has a long way to go and is suffering financially. Go here to support her on a GoFundMe.

Gardening between work

After all the hours I put in the last two weeks (really, the last two months!), it was a relief not to be scheduled at the library this week. Of course, that does not mean I was not working! There were the ever-present emails, monitoring social media, and then the projects and so forth. We had planned to reopen to limited patrons next week, but our safety materials (plexiglass shields etc.) did not arrive in time so we had to scramble to make last-minute changes, new plans, etc. I also created funding requests for our Friends and other organizations, tracked summer reading materials requests, and handled reader's advisory and materials requests from patrons and teachers (summer school is virtual this year). I got about halfway through processing all the donations and wrote Facebook posts for the next week as well as scheduling them and so on. So... not actually less work, just doing it without a constant stream of phone calls and driving back and forth to the library?

• Projects completed
• May/June book orders (I'm revisiting all my projected book orders because there are so many publication date changes, so this took longer than usual.)
• Contacted all teachers with materials still out (this was very complicated and time-consuming. I don't even want to think about the next steps, when I assess what isn't coming back.)
• Storytime bundles: ABCs
• Requested materials for teachers for summer school
• Webinars
• Penguin Young Readers 2020 Fall Preview
• COVID-19: Safety tips for reopening your library with Dr. Navsaria
• Meetings
• Meetings with director and other managers to deal with current events and reopening plans.