Grafton Public Library Weekly Report For April 4-9

Grafton MA

10 April, 2022

2:36 PM

Description

Press release from Grafton Public Library: April 8, 2022 We celebrated National Library Week with a typewriter poetry program, a free live Friday night concert, and look forward to our Friends Spring Egg Hunt fundraiser on Saturday! A bagel and fruit breakfast was provided to staff for Fri/Sat. No gate counts were provided this week; we had 6,327 visitors in March. We circulated 2,523 items, had 444 materials requests and filled 371 requests, sent 552 items in transit and received 503, added 23 new card holders, and 121 new items. Several staff were out on scheduled leave, and you may have seen new faces as we called in temps to work: Debby, Eric, Erin, Mary and Sarah. Mary completed a Crowd Manager training and received a certificate through the Commonwealth, and other staff were encouraged to take it. Beth received all of the open purchase orders for the construction project, and was tasked with tracking down all of the invoices and quotes and orders to determine what money remains. This is a huge project that took most of the week. She met with GCTV, staff, Evan, had a weekly check in with the Board of Trustees chair, and opened the building for the Friends and Girl Scouts to stuff eggs on Sunday. Beth attended the Department Head meeting and the Construction Team Meeting; we are still waiting for punch list items. Window film was applied, Verizon installed equipment, the lighting technician returned, and the clock in the Historic Reading Room was removed for repair. Art rail has been received and will be installed next week. The Children's Room "Masks Required" mandate has shifted to "Masks Recommended" and staff will continue to make masks available for free to those who want or need them. Masks remain optional for patrons and staff in the rest of the Library. Borrower Service Staff handled all the usual circulation functions, including holds, delivery, lobby, AMH system, museum passes, room reservations, and patron assistance. We also practiced using the Remote Meeting OWL 360-degree camera and began working on the technology inventory. Allie reset the Bibliotheca gate and got it working again, created signage for new April displays; assisted patrons with faxing, copying, and account history preferences; processed egg hunt tickets; cleaned up room use reservations; wrote a Performance Review self-assessment for Readers Advisory; framed Fiction, Mystery and Sci-Fi Readalikes handouts for shelves; worked on the Readers Advisory database and Historical Fiction lists. Ranjita worked on Library of Things and discards. Jane handled the NYT bestseller list and the items with alerts report. Sandhya updated the GPL website, hiding past egg hunt posts; submitted ComCat requests; updated museum pass information, e sheets; processed out of network and out of state loans and worked on notary training. Susan supervised the team, completed monthly statistics and Circulation narrative, conducted an employee review, weeded 75 duplicate fiction titles, ran transit and lost and paid reports, Heidi received a very kind compliment from a patron regarding her customer service and dedication. She worked on promotion for the Community Read. Kate finished a long-term project on Grafton Area Social Services, for staff reference when working with patrons. This guide includes contact information and summaries for approximately 60 different social service providers. The "At a Glance" part of the guide outlines the providers and which of 16 different social service categories they fulfill. Examples of these categories are "addiction and recovery," "citizenship and ESOL," "emergency shelters," "food and pantries," etc. Using lists generated by Susan, Kate began shifting Large Print non-fiction titles from the regular non-fiction area (where they are currently interfiled), to the designated "Large Print" room. She and other temp staff will continue shifting these over the next several workdays and hope to have the non-fiction and biographies fully relocated by the end of the week. Sarah communicated with the schools, ran three preschool outreach storytimes at SGES, assisted with Friends of the GPL Spring Egg Hunt programming, addressed collection development and maintenance, planned storytime lessons for both SGES and the Spring Egg Hunt, communicated with Apple Tree Arts, cleaned and prepped the CR Program Room for this weekend's program, and managed staff and volunteers. Jen updated the online calendar and social media, assisted with the Spring Egg Hunt programming, and planned for Library Babies. Cyndi got caught up on projects after being away on vacation and cleaned and prepped the CR Program Room for this weekend's program. Mare managed volunteers and assisted patrons. Stacie decorated the Children's Room, planned and prepped the STEM Corner, and set up the April Monthly Mission activity. Kristin communicated with the local schools, planned for her upcoming Book Clubs and Comic Club programs, and set up the April sensory table. This week, Allison shifted the teen nonfiction collection again. Now the top shelf is for display. This allows for nearly all books to stand up straight for easy browsing (the top shelf is slightly shorter than the other three). For one particular bay a shelf was removed as many of the books in that collection were oversized. This allows them to be shelved normally and we don't have to have a separate collection that would have to be re-cataloged to accommodate the larger books. Additionally Allison is working on book recommendation lists for our summer reading badge themes (camping, crafting, astronomy, etc.) that highlight items from our collection as well as items that are available instantly through Hoopla. These will be added to the summer reading website. Sarah is working on a list of manga as suggestions to be added to the collection for teens wanting more to read as well as to broaden what we can have for the manga book club. Saturday the end of last week was quiet. Several teens with parents came in to hang out and work on projects. A group of teens arrived to use the computers to play games together. Later more of their friends arrived mostly girls and they all played apples to apples and in general hung out together. They were all very respectful of the space and of their noise level. They were great. Teens using the game room during the week continue to be challenging to work with. Monday there were issues with teens remotely accessing the television and computers using Bluetooth connection from unknown teen's phones. We will be replacing the wireless keyboards and mice with wired ones and turning the Bluetooth off and requiring headphones for computer use, which can be checked out from a staff member. Two teens scattered the cards from Apples to Apples all over the Teen Room, ruining the game for teens who were actually playing. Food and drinks continue to be an issue, especially in the Gaming Room and the Maker space. Teens were reminded again of behavior and respecting the space on Tuesday. Erin, who came over to help from the Children's Room, worked with a teen very interested in making origami cranes and made one successfully. Beginning on Monday, any patrons with a previous policy violation who has a new policy violation will be served with an Order of No Trespass and expelled for one week. The order will be served to the teen and parents/guardian at home, and they will have to meet with the Head of Teen Services or their delegate before returning. Repeated violations will result in longer periods of expulsion. Teens who cause damage to the library property or collections will be charged for the damage. This press release was produced by Grafton Public Library. The views expressed here are the author's own.