Grafton Public Library

Director’s Report: June 2017

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Happy Anniversary, Grafton Public Library! And Happy Birthday, and thank you, Jerome! Thanks to the Gala committee and the many volunteers who put together a fantastic event on Saturday June 24. In spite early morning rain showers and ensuing mugginess, we celebrated Jerome Wheelock’s birthday with a grand carnival extravaganza on the common. Our committee of volunteers led our youngest patrons in a series of lawn games. There was a bouncy house, snow cones, and cake for everyone.

Building
Beth P and I are working on estimates for brick repointing. A leaking pipe turned out to be a roof issue, and we have in hand an estimate of $1,000-$1,600 to add a witch’s hat and sealant to the roof by the fire escape to prevent water from entering the building. Column repair will be scheduled for the fall.

Garden & Landscaping
Thanks to Beth Patch for leading a planting day at the beginning of June, and for maintaining the containers are the Library’s entrances. Thanks to Linda Casey, who did a phenomenal job pruning, splitting plants, weeding, removing vines and mulching in the Library’s formal beds. Follow the stepping stone path to a delightful fairy house!

Budget
The FY17 budget is closed. We submitted a request for over $6,000 in encumbrances and missed one bill for $56 for the copier, which will be brought to Town Meeting.

Circulation
Overdrive introduced a new app called Libby. Most of the staff have used it personally or have learned how to use it. It allows users to store several library cards (from different networks) and thus have more borrowing opportunities. Another plus is that one can start reading the downloaded book right from the app rather than having to open up another site. Overdrive has been slow to create new brochures, but we have made some fliers to hand out to our patrons in the meantime.

The FY ’17 Mediated ILL statistics show that we submitted 111 requests and 81 of those requests were filled. (A separate report will be written to show the outcome of the unfilled requests.) Figures for FY ’16 were 102 requests with 62 filled.

NOTICE: On Sunday, August 20, between 6AM and 4PM, we are replacing our old database server with a brand new, faster server. We are also upgrading the Postgres database software underpinning our Evergreen ILS. These significant improvements will boost performance across the board. Evergreen will be completely unavailable during the upgrade. Reports will be down longer than the rest of the functions. Reports will be up by the end of the day on Tuesday. Our EZ-Proxy server will be set to “pass through” mode so any services using EZ-Proxy authentication will continue to allow patron access to those resources. However, patrons will not be able to login to Overdrive and use other services using SIP related functions including self-check machines during the downtime on Sunday.

Museum Passes
June was a big month for museum pass use; we had 177 reservations and 157 were picked up. Once again we will be using donated tickets for the New England Aquarium, and this year the same person donated tickets for the Museum of Science. Southwick has been requested multiple times—it’s a very expensive “pass” that involves the Library pre-chasing discount tickets. They were not all used last year, and were used as a prize giveaway for summer reading and for a volunteer appreciation event. Given the popularity we will revisit for next summer.

Volunteers
Five new volunteers started this month. We had 47 people putting in 163 hours this month, including one person whose been working hard on the grounds and flowers, and 9 young adults from St. James Church who contributed to the grounds clean up. One volunteer has offered to do an in-service on Excel for any interested staff, which will be discussed at our next staff meeting.

Borrowers, Attendance & Usage Statistics, Program Statistics, Reference Statistics, Web Metrics, Social Media Metrics
Please see the ARIS stat handout.

Library Renovation
We continue to wait for word on our grant status, to be announced July 13, 2017. Next Library Planning and Building Committee meeting is August 7 at 7pm.

IT
There was an issue with IT changing our DNS server and not letting us know; computers were down for a half day.

Outreach and Partnerships
Crescent Manor had 19 visitors, 71 check-outs and renewals and 17 requests.

Friends
At the Friends of the Library Annual meeting, a social media coordinator was introduced, the new slate of officers was voted in, and fundraising was discussed. The program was well attended and it was nice to see new faces.

Volunteers
One new library volunteer began in May, and one ELL student has been matched with a tutor. This month we had a total of 31 people who put in 141 hours.

Staff
There were lots of days we worked “short” as staff needed to use vacation days before the year end. June tends to be a stressful month with the start of Summer Reading creating extra work, increased patrons needing help, fewer staff, and much larger deliveries to process. Once July comes, things seem to smooth out, but June saw several of us heading home in a very weary state!

Donna attended webinar on Libraries and Compassion Fatigue.

Tech Services
125 items were added in June. Donna did Original cataloging on games, equipment, worked on series re-cataloging and labeling in the Children’s Room, did repairs on spine labels, cases, re-covering, re-packaging, maintained mystery section, and provided desk coverage.

Children’s Room
At the beginning of the month, we wrapped up our Spring Storytime sessions, and promoted our Summer Reading program by visiting each elementary school. Sarah and I also participated in a new outreach program at the schools-Tech Day. We led three groups of kids through a series of fun, engineering activities featuring LEGO!

As the school year ended, we saw an uptick in elementary-aged visitors. Our daily ticket and animal voting project were great incentives for daily visits. We provided plenty of copies of the school’s summer recommendations, and even provided suggestions of our own. Several of our summer programs filled up within hours of registrations going live, proving that staggered registrations was a good way to ensure program availability for all. It looks like it will be a busy summer!

Teen Services
Sarah and Allison spent a day at the Grafton Middle School talking about our program and booktalking their summer reading choices to English classes. Sarah, Allison, and I also went to the Grafton High School and set up a table during the three lunch periods. We used our spin wheel and it was a great success to attract attention. We gave away free books, comic books, note pads, candy, and stress toys while signing up teens for the summer program.

A lot of time was spent getting the summer programming packets ready and finalizing books, video games and supplies to order July 1st. We will be adding a bunch of new books, board games, and video games to our collection in July so stay tuned!

Adult Services
The “Not Just for Young Adults” Book Discussion Group met to discuss These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly; the Daytimers Book Group met to discuss The Girl in the Garden by Kamala Nair; the GPL Mystery Book Group met to discuss Dead Man’s Chest by Kerry Greenwood; the “Reads Well with Others” Adult Book Discussion Group met to discuss Walden by Henry David Thoreau and the “Inspirational Book Club” met to discuss The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis.
The Library also hosted Wonder Woman Day, Planting Day, Saturday Afternoon Knitters, the Grafton Writers Group, the Friends of the Library Annual Meeting, Songbirds of the Northeast with naturalist John Root, and the very well-received Jerome Wheelock Birthday Party.

Displays included themes such as the Great Outdoors, Get Caught Listening (June is Audiobook Month), Songbirds of the Northeast, Beach Reads display, and Green Cleaning display to go with an upcoming program in July. The fiction display for the month was “Stories for and about Dog Lovers”, and it was been incredibly popular!

Heidi proctored 2 tests.

Comments from the Public:
• “You just made my night.” (Reminding an adult to sign up for Summer Reading)
• “You must love your job. You’re always dressing up.”
• “You always have such pretty flowers.”
• “It’s a pleasure [coming to GPL Mystery Book Discussion Group].
• “I don’t know how you do it. But every time I look, I find new books I’ve never seen before and want to check out. You keep it fresh. (non-fiction)
• “I really appreciate the help with my research.”
• “I’ve heard of other libraries having local art exhibits in their libraries. I think we should in the new library. It would bring people in and give excitement to people knowing something very important to them is being shared. And they’d have friends and family from away come see it too.”
• “Congratulations on your triumph.” (the building vote passing)
• “Thank you for looking over my resume.”
• “The flowers out front are so pretty.”
• “She dresses up as characters. It’s so cool.” (One person said to her friend)
• “Your flowers are beautiful outside, aren’t they?” (out front)
• “Love these. I don’t have to deal with 11 discs to switch out.” (MP3 audio discs)

NO Log
6/28 No, there is no Mr. Kim program this week. Hulafrog has inaccurate information.
6/26 No Southwick passes -AC
6/22 No, we don’t have Grandma Gatewood’s walk : the inspiring story of the woman who saved the Appalachian Trail / Ben Montgomery -HF
6/21 No coloring group this year? We’ll miss it! It was nice for the whole family.
6/21 No Southwick passes -SL
6/20 No Southwick passes -SL
6/19 No Southwick passes -SL
6/17 No nooks to lend -SL
6/15 No, we don’t give out passes for Southwick Zoo.
6/13 We don’t know where the bus stops on the common. (I called WRTA for brochures today) –SL

YES Log
6/28 “I’m so happy I was able to get this notarized here!”
6/7 “Looks like you’ve outgrown this space.” Patron comment in Children’s Room
6/6 Yes, our catalog computers do have “Paint’! –SL
6/5 Yes, you can access Pronounciator from home -SL

Respectfully submitted,
Beth Gallaway
Library Director

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