This week at the library; or, Week 15 of the pandemic

This is my week to work at home. We are continuing to slowly reopen the library, although I continue to be firm in my determination not to reopen the children's and teen area to the public until the fall at least. Kids touch everything and while most people would probably take precautions there is simply no way to monitor the public and we can't pick and choose who is allowed in. Cases continue to rise in our area, with multiple local restaurants shut down for staff or customers testing positive in the last week.

I am continuing to post virtual storytimes on Facebook and via a weekly virtual email. We have subscribed to 10 weeks of virtual summer programming, including shows, craft instructions, and music. We have summer reading logs through August available for kids up through 5th grade and with their summer reading packet they also get activities (coloring sheets etc.) and a few coupons and prizes. I plan to distribute free books at the end of July and possibly August. We have weekly activity packs available and demand for these has skyrocketed, necessitating a lot of last minute purchasing and packing. We have an online teen summer reading program for middle school and high school. We have storytime bundles - 5 books and a craft - available every week. Patrons can also request personalized reader's advisory services and I have built extensive Pinterest boards for browsing. We have distributed summer reading materials and LOTG books at multiple food service stops in June and will do so again for at least a week in July and August. We're also packing and supplying activities and reading materials for our smallest daycare/summer care center, which I would normally visit weekly with activities and stories. I have been working with our cataloger and processor to create multiple new maker kits and change as many of the STEAM lab materials over to circulating maker kits as possible. I'm also coming in every Saturday, during or after our open hours, to sort through the previous week's work and set up all the activities and handouts for the next week. Nearly all of these things are being done solely by youth services staff - circulation have been great at helping us pack activity bags when they can, but they are swamped with holds, cleaning responsibilities, and more.

In summary, we are not taking a break - we are busy and working very hard!

Some projects from this week

• Completely revamped Pinterest - it was getting far too crowded. Now everything is in fewer boards but more sections and aimed towards browsers. I also built a complete board of all our manga series for browsers and to assist staff.
• Scheduling and other supervisory stuff, including meetings
• Adding to and updating activity kits and handouts for the summer
• Lengthy battle with Facebook to get it to send me email notifications.
• A month's worth of Facebook content created and scheduled
• Trip to Walmart (I did not undertake this lightly, but it's the only place to affordably buy toothbrushes in bulk...)
• More storytime bundles - I got through July!