March 2026 in review; Looking forward to April

Two circulation staff working on clean-up.

 Well. That was... quite a month. We resumed a smaller slate of regular programs, three afternoon drop-ins and a Friday morning storytime. Our main storytime, with a school colleague, is still being held at the Rec center. The big event this month was moving all the adult fiction back into place and moving all the adult nonfiction across the library and into its new place.

I took a week off and started it by dropping by the library (on a Sunday, when we're closed) to show visiting family the renovations. What we found instead was a very dramatic and large leak, the result of unseen damage to the roof during a windstorm two days before. Emergency measures were taken and I went back on vacation, but staff had to deal with all the fallout of that while I was gone as well as being closed for an unexpected snowstorm the following Monday.

Moving all the adult materials was completed and we are now getting ready for the final move and our only closure during this whole process in April. The last week of March was our school's spring break so that was busy as well. I think we are fairly expert at moving stuff around patrons now, although it's not what anyone would call enjoyable.

My department has done a lot of prep work for summer, but we still have a lot to do and we'll be concentrating on that during the week we are completely closed. The following weeks, only the library lobby will be open to the public with shorter hours, and during that time we have a large list of projects including painting and getting the program rooms ready for actual use.

I put together the new book spotlight early this month, so people could stock up before spring break and the closure, and I also presented at a virtual conference. This was a little tricky since when I'd written the idea for the presentation, about our renovation, it was a lot earlier and we had not... experienced as much.

Technical Services department checking books for damage.