Grafton Public Library

Weekly Report: August 1-6, 2022

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The Library will have a one-hour delay, opening 11am on Friday August 12 due to scheduled  staff development. ComCat (the integrated catalog for all nine MA library networks) will be down for an upgrade on Wed Aug 10 for about 15 minutes beginning at 10pm, and our CWMARS network will be experiencing some down time for a hardware upgrade from Wednesday August 10 at 11pm until Wednesday August 11 at 2am.

This week we circulated 3,488 items, received 612 items in transit and sent 501 items. We requested 389 items and filled hold 373 requests; registered 32 patrons for library cards, and added 24 new items. The most popular book this week is The Hotel Nantucket by Elin Hilderbrand. We circulated 15 museum passes and hosted 11 meetings in our conference, study and tutoring rooms for 19 people.

As Director, Beth completed payroll, worked on scheduling, submitted six Capital Requests, worked on key codes and alarm codes for new staff, and staffed the Library’s table at National Night Out with Heidi and members from the Board of Library Trustees and Friends, where she was interviewed on GCTV by Mr. Gallagher. She alerted raffle basket winners of their prize, available for pickup on Sat. Beth met with Evan, Karen (trustee chair) and multiple staff members, and provided updated job descriptions to grade 1, 4 & 5 staff. She corresponded with MBLC, the Friends, the Capital Campaign, Boy Scouts, DRA architects, and various vendors and program providers. She worked on an upcoming grant project, fall programming, and the Library’s Food Permit application. She worked on staff development day scheduling, approved meeting room requests, wrote August press releases, and updated the Library’s calendar and website. began planning an election worker recruitment event the Town Clerk, and responded to requests for information about the Library of Things from the Asst. Town Administrator, and to Accounting and HR on personnel and hiring details.

As de facto Clerk of the Works, Beth attended the shortest construction meeting to date – 15 minutes! Final HVAC commissioning is scheduled for Friday. Worcester Elevator was on site for a pre-inspection and we discovered our fire extinguishers are due for annual inspection; Beth scheduled an inspection with Impact. The building department repaired a piece of woodwork that fell off the wall. We reported continued leaking due to torrential rain in the teen room at the Emergency Exit door to the construction team (we added piece of hardware to divert the water last month). She submitted help tickets to American Alarm and to Signet for assistance with a security issue. Thank you to Mary Lauria, Town Accountant, for providing the complete set of building project invoices so we can allocate the funding for reporting purposes, and to respond to Library Journal’s survey of new construction for an upcoming issue, and to Jared for his assistance with Vadar.

As Acting Head of Borrower Services, Beth communicated with multiple patrons about returns of damaged books and met with various staff. She covered the Borrower Services desk and worked on scheduling, sent out updates from the C/W MARS network, and updated the Bibliotheca ticket for the AMH printing, display and email issues. The AMH jammed several times because patrons continue to stack books or place them into the machine pages first, which makes the book stick in the conveyer belt.

As Acting Head of Technical Services, Beth provided access to a not-yet-cataloged CD player to meet a patron request – Heidi did a conversion on the fly to allow for checkout.

As Volunteer Coordinator, Beth responded to requests for service hours. We are unable to place any new volunteers at this time but there is still opportunity to get service hours in our August wedding programs on Wednesday August 10 and 24.

Eileen processed museum renewals and prepared the warrant for payment, learning how to distribute funding on invoices associated with Purchase Orders. She also covered the Borrower Services desk and collected, sorted and processed all the mail from last week because we forgot to pick it up when she was on vacation!

Borrower Services
Staff covered the lobby desk, circ desk and sorting room, while down two positions – one vacancy, one person on vacation. Sandhya coordinated with Susan about Crescent Manor, and then visited Crescent Manner. She handled out of system requests, cleared Hold Shelf, sent Museum Pass Renewals to Eileen, worked on home delivery, calling patrons and placing holds for materials. Sandhya made bookmarks for Holds shelf directing people to checkout holds before leaving with them, and created a display. Jane worked on material with item alerts, New York Times audio fiction best seller list, and recommendations for an audio book order. Ranjita worked on her August display (friendship themed books), performed a monthly check of the AED and first aid boxes in each department, reviewed the NYT bestseller non-fiction book and CD audio book, and processed few out-of-network requests

Children’s Services
Patrons continue to make use of our cool, air-conditioned space to gather together to play, read, and meet with friends as the hot and humid weather continues. CR staff continue to assist patrons with their summer reading needs, run programs, and have begun to block out programming time frames for the upcoming school year. We have been fortunate enough to have a group of dedicated CR volunteers, but the volume of books has been high, so staff have been spending time shelving to keep up with returns.

Programs offered  this week include Summer Movie & Craft, Comic Creators Club, Summer Preschool Storytime, Summer LEGO Brickbuilders, Summer Songs in the Park (moved indoors due to the heat advisory), Nature is a Box of Colors,  and our third session of Summer Sewing Camp. Due to an unanticipated staff shortage, we had to cancel two of our programs this week.

 Teen Services
Allison and Sarah S. worked on programming, scheduling, and hosted teen movie night. The Teen Room was closed for 6 hours this week due to lack of staffing.

Reference Services
Heidi and Eric answered reference questions, helped with check-ins, tech and the like. Heidi created library cards for people, and worked on program planning, and statistics. Eric recorded July data for his assigned databases and met with Filmocracy to discuss pricing and subscription options. Both Heidi and Eric helped cover gaps at the Borrower Services Desk.

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