Director’s Report for December 2023
Director’s Report – December 2023
The library was open 24 days in December and had 4,680 visitors. The library closed early on December 15, 2023, for the municipal staff holiday party and GPL staff holiday celebration. The library was closed on Saturday, December 23, 2023, and on Monday, December 25, 2023 in observance of the Christmas holiday.
We offered 27 programs for over 894 attendees, including Grafton Celebrates the Holidays on December 3rd and New Years at Noon. We had 169 meeting room reservations for over 321 participants. We hosted an additional 30 meeting room uses for staff use (meetings, interviews, programs, etc.) Five incident reports were filed, including disruptive teen behavior, foreign objects caught on the materials handling equipment, a minor staff injury, a disruptive patron, and a locked front door during opening hours.
ADMINISTRATION
Director Beth Schreiber tendered her resignation in December 2023, and the search for a new director is underway. We would like to thank Beth for her years of service to the Grafton Public Library and the Town of Grafton. We wish her well in all of her future endeavors.
Debby Jackson transitioned to her new position as Head of Teen Services. Shannon Phelan has taken over the role of Administrative Assistant for the library. Eileen maintained the collection of periodicals, took care of incoming mail, and prepared bills.
Staffing
Kara Dzindolet accepted a position at another library and resigned as Head of Borrower Services in December 2023. In the interim, Susan Leto has graciously volunteered to reprise her former role managing the Borrower Services department until a replacement can be found.
We recorded at least 28 low coverage instances (others may not have been documented due to short staffing) attributable to scheduled, earned leave of benefited staff, chronic understaffing in the Teen department, staff out on leave, and staff resignations.
Budget
At the end of December, we were at 58% of our budget for the 2024 fiscal year. Most of those expenses are contracted services billed annually at the beginning of the fiscal year such as Bibliotecha and CWMars.
Building
Assistant Town Administrator William Blake is overseeing building issues and has been coordinating with various contractors regarding general maintenance, door locking issues, and ongoing flood remediation.
Construction Update
Replacement carpet has been ordered for the Children’s Room and Community Room. No definitive timeline has been provided for completion of construction activities.
IT Update
Staff developed procedures for laptop in-library use and will work to roll out the laptops in January 2024.
Volunteers, Outreach and Partnerships
Crescent Manor BookWagon had 5 participants, 21 check-outs and renewals, and 4 requests.
We delivered 7 items to Homebound patrons. We had seven volunteers who put in 8 hours of work.
Social Media
We have 1,100 followers on TikTok, 2,200 followers on Facebook, 827 on Instagram, 113 on YouTube, 429 on Pinterest, and 8 on Flickr.
CHILDREN’S SERVICES
The Children’s Room continued to take up residence in the Friends Café during the month of December. The Children’s Room drywall repair has been completed and we were excited to see the project move forward with the installation of the flooring in the Children’s Program Room and the Children’s Work Room.
We opened our doors to the community on Sunday, December 3rd as part of the Grafton Celebrates the Holidays festivities. We hosted the Girl Scouts for their annual gingerbread decorating contest for the second year running, and we welcomed Diane Edgecomb back to the library for two performances of her storytelling program, Once Upon a Wintertime.
We continue to provide outreach programming to North Grafton Elementary School, South Grafton Elementary School, Busy Bee Academy, Silver Spruce, and the Willard House & Clock Museum. Through our outreach programming, we presented 15 storytimes for 233 children and teachers.
We rang in the new year with 58 very special guests as we brought back a perennial favorite program, New Years at Noon.
TEEN SERVICES
Debby Jackson took over as Head of Teen Services and spent time moving into the office, getting acclimated, and beautifully decorating the entire space with holiday lights.
Staff supervised teens using the space and met as a group to discuss future plans. Staff also hosted a Teen Gaming afternoon with open play of Mario Kart and Supersmash Bros video games.
BORROWER SERVICES
Museum Passes
There were 57 reservations; 49 were picked up and there were 8 “No Shows.”
Circulation
We registered 64 new borrowers and corrected four accounts for Grafton patrons.
Evergreen
Front-line staff and administration are scheduled to participate in training for Aspen, the new public catalog that will be debuting in March 2024.
ILL
We made two out of network requests; none were unfillable. We sent out two items to certified libraries.
Overdrive/Libby App
The total checkouts for December were 4,496. Of those, 1,429 were audiobooks, 3,049 were books, and 18 were comic books.
Displays
Our main display for December was Holiday fiction. The 4 smaller displays were: Tis the Season to be Freezin; Cozy Fiction; By the Fireside Mysteries; and National Short Story Day.
Programs
Sandhya hosted one daytime “Unplug with Art” program for adults: 5 people attended. She also organized and hosted “Holiday Luminaries” for adults: 9 people attended. We had one department staff meeting.
Seed Library
The seed packets program has been closed for the season and is expected to relaunch at the end of February.
Passports
We are still not accepting appointments for Passports.
REFERENCE SERVICES
We recorded the following statistics for database uses: Gale 747, PebbleGo 3, Peterson’s 2, Transparent Language 1, Novelist 2, Ancestry 97, ComicsPLUS 18, Pronounciator, BookFlix 8, and Teachables 4. We had 64 adults record public computer use. WiFi statistics were unavailable. Staff placed 409 holds for library materials.
Heidi assisted with tech and reference questions as well as circulation and room reservations / check-ins and museum passes. She also hosted book groups, worked on collection development, program planning and public relations. Heidi also attended professional development, assisted at Grafton Celebrates the Holidays, collected monthly statistics, and did outreach at Crescent Manor.
Eric assisted patrons with technology, reference, museum passes, room requests / check-ins and circulation questions. Eric finished reviewing the lost non-fiction reports, put out new materials, put out new bookends, and worked on book display ideas. Eric also updated the adult non-fiction budget spreadsheet, ordered new adult non-fiction materials, and reported monthly reference statistics.
Displays
Eric made a “Make Something New” staircase display. Heidi made an “In Memoriam” end cap display for Sandra Day O’Connor and Norman Lear.
Programs
We held the following in-person book discussion groups:
• “Not Just for Young Adults” Book Discussion Group: So, This is Christmas by Tracy Andreen,
• Daytimers Book Group: Winter People by Jennifer McMahon,
• GPL Mystery Book Group: The Bone Orchard by Paul Doiron,
• “Reads Well with Others” Adult Book Discussion Group: Elevation: a Novel by Stephen King, and
• The “Inspirational Book Club” and Guided Meditation: Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life by Nhá̂t Hạnh Thích and Lilian W. Y. Cheung. (Ended up being discussed on 1/2/24.)
Saturday Afternoon Knitting was canceled this month (Saturday, December 16; 2pm-4pm).
TECHNICAL SERVICES
During the month of December, 589 new items were added, and 317 items were deleted. Allison Cusher celebrated her first official month as the Head of Tech Services. In addition to her regular duties of ordering and processing new items and repairing items as needed, she worked on the following special projects:
• created options for new spine label stickers to discuss with Children’s Services and other department heads,
• started a list of adult fiction series titles. Once the list is complete, she will go through our collection and update the spine labels to include this information,
• created a new section for teens: light novels, which now live at the beginning of the manga collection, and
• created lists for department heads of item records that should be deleted from the system. These include items that have been missing for 2+ years and items that are lost (not returned) for 2+ years (the item is still on the patrons account). She has been going through our holdings and deleting records that we no longer need.
FRIENDS OF THE GRAFTON PUBLIC LIBRARY (FRIENDS)
The Friends book sale remains on hold as the Children’s Room continues to use the Friends’ Corner as their temporary collection location. The Friends offered book bundles and other gifts for sale over the holidays. The next Friends meeting will be posted to the Friends Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/GPLFriends
The Friends had a total of 50 volunteer hours for the month of December, which included meetings and planning and prepping for Grafton Celebrates the Holidays (e.g., making book bundles, attending the event itself).