Library Weekly Report August 8-13, 2022
This week we circulated 3,344 items, received 687 items in transit and sent 606 items. We requested 540 items and filled 437 hold requests; registered 17 patrons for library cards, and added 19 new items. The most popular book this week is The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict. We hosted 18 meetings in our conference, study and tutoring rooms for 47 people, including private studying, tutoring, and a meeting of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Graton and Upton.
We are extremely short staffed with vacancies and staff leave and have had over 170 instances of shortages in the last 10 months. The library closed at 5pm on Tuesday due to an unanticipated staffing shortage and the Children’s closed on Thursday evening at 5pm due to unanticipated staffing shortage. We do not have enough employees to adequately staff our service desks and provide the level of service and programming the public, Board, and MBLC expects.
As Director, Beth managed patron feedback and incidents, ordered a rug for her office, scheduled fire extinguisher inspection, submitted the Library’s Food permit application. She dealt with an elevator issue which is still being resolved on Friday morning. The policy committee met to review the draft 3D printing policy and had a conversation around what would be allowed to be printed, how the requests to print would be managed, and other logistics. The most current draft may not reflect the increase in filament costs. The cost to run the machines would be recouped in the printing fee. It was suggested we add a 3D printer on the upper level for patrons of all ages to use. At this time, there is no 3D printing available until the policy is approved and staff are trained.
Eileen paid bills, ordered office supplies, and finalized FY22 encumbrances.
Debby worked on meeting minutes and correspondence.
Staffing
We have multiple people on leave in multiple departments. Our new Head of Borrower Services began on Wednesday. We have extended an offer for the Technical Services Librarian position, which was accepted. Cynthia O’Neil will start Tuesday September 6.
As defacto clerk of the works, Beth provided FF&E invoices upon request and began categorizing expenses into eligible and ineligible costs, requested additional shelving purchases from the Capital Campaign, purchased a rug from her office, spoke with Colliers about HVAC commissioning.
Borrower Services
As Acting Head of Borrower Services, Beth helped manage the department and provided some training to Kara, and scheduled training for Museum Passes and Evergreen, our circulation system. Kara received training on EventKeeper, our calendar, museum pass reservation, and meeting room reservation software, as well as general orientation.
Borrower Services staff served patrons at the Lobby and Circulation desks and triaged the sorting room. Sandhya managed out of network requests for materials, worked on Home Delivery requests (emails & calls to patrons, ordering books, emailing volunteer for pick up), made Closure signs for staff development and posted to the website and social media, cleared expired holds from hold shelf, emailed patrons with active holds to see if they picked their holds without checking them out, made a list of museum renewal forms, and managed Facebook correspondence.
Jane worked on locating items with alerts that need to be sent to cataloging, the New York Times best seller list for fiction and recommending titles that we do not own, and preparing the Dewey Decimal Number of the Week display for the 600s (inventions, medicine, astronauts, cooking, homesteading, farm animals, dogs/cats, building/remodeling). Allie’s patron service interactions including assisting a patron with printing document via phone then adjusting her certificate’s brightness for proper printing, Libby and fax assistance, reference and reader’s advisory; researching Tech Services computer Evergreen issues delivering blank screen, troubleshooting Star receipt printer issues in sorting room, resetting the connectGate via electrical room after a weekend power outage, processing delivery and holds shelf, emptying book boxes in Tech Services, creating IT tickets and updating our IT issues sheet. Allie’s tip of the week: do not make copies of master bookmarks with a stickie note attached!
Children’s Services
This week the CR was down 2 staff members. Due to coverage issues, we closed the room early on Tuesday and Thursday night and canceled our Wednesday evening Campfire Ghost Stories program. We are seeing an increase in returns as families prepare to head back to schools and begin to return materials that were heavily used over summer vacation. The heat continued in the early part of the week bringing many families in to cool off, but a much-needed drop in temperatures arrived in time for the end of the week and three of our outdoor programs.
Programs offered this week include the continuation of our Pet Food Drive, Summer DIY Chalk, Summer Movie & Craft featuring Disney-Pixar’s Onward, three sessions of Bookworms Book Club, two sessions of Summer Tie Dye, a special appearance with books and sensory table at the Grafton Farmers Market, DIY Chalk Pick up & Drawing, Once Upon a Storytime at Willard House & Clock Museum, LEGO Brickbuilders, our final session of Summer Songs in the Park with Apple Tree Arts. and Color Me Calm.
Teen Services
Allison and Sarah managed the teen space, ran multiple programs, and worked on materials orders. Allison reviewed the draft 3D printer policy.
Reference Services
Heidi worked on telephone system maintenance (we are having several issues with ring groups and voicemail), and ran book discussion groups. Eric assisted patrons with tech, reference questions, and check-out; worked on Collection Maintenance, deleting obsolete/old materials from database and preparing withdrawn materials for sale or the free shelf, and utilized a free trial of Filmocracy, a niche film festival database.
Technical Services
As Acting Head of Technical Services, Beth continued to manage out of system catalog records, conversions on the fly for items on hold for patrons, and Allie assisted with cataloging tasks.