This week at the library; or, A new beginning

The pandemic is not, of course, over. It is, in point of fact, increasing rapidly in my county. However, I feel like we are finally starting to shift from a reactive mode to planning for how things will be now and starting to learn to work in a different way.

Our schools don't start until September and we don't normally have programs in August, just drop-in craft activities. So for this year I made an additional summer reading calendar for August, and am continuing activity packs and storytime bundles for the month - families can send in a form to request from a selection of projects for different ages each week.

I'm working with my staff and colleagues on planning programs. They will be all virtual through September at least, and we are throwing around outdoor possibilities, blended virtual/take home kits, etc. Our library garden isn't big enough for outdoor programs, in addition to the noise of the traffic and the lack of barriers between the garden and said traffic, so we'll be partnering if we go in that direction.

Starting this week, we opened the youth areas to browsing by appointment. An individual or family could make an appointment and spend up to an hour browsing. All the toys, seating, and activities are gone.We had 9 people or families sign up or drop by, and I am expecting this to increase as word gets out. I'm still offering our online reader's advisory as well.

I'm working on moving forward into a "how do we serve our patrons now" mode, instead of focusing on the programs and services we can no longer offer. Our workflows are different, we have to plan around the possibility of staff being quarantined or sick, and everyone is under a lot of stress so it's hard to maintain our usual high levels of customer service. While we have a lower volume of circulation, about half of what we normally have, we also have a lot of increased labor around cleaning, quarantining, pulling materials, etc. It's a big shift for everyone and I don't expect us to get fully comfortable with this until the end of the year.