It’s the Holiday Season…

It’s that time of year where people are (hopefully) more friendly, patient and kind than usual and although I wish it would happen year around.  I love the Christmas season for this reason.  I also love finding the perfect gift for someone and the memories I have of Christmas spent with my family.  Now that my siblings have grown up, we are spread far across the country and I am counting down the days (9 days!) until we all get together for Christmas.

Here in the library, we have slowed our programming down for the rest of the holiday season.  It never stops completely, but in previous years we have learned that families are really just too busy to get to the library.  Classroom parties, parties on the weekends with friends and all the homework that needs to be finished before the holiday break leads to a much quieter library.

That being said, I’m getting a lot done – we’re working on our website, which I believe can sometimes be a black hole, but I’m hoping by making some changes, the library website will be better for the staff and patrons using it.  I hope that by the time we finish updating the information, reorganizing everything, and redesigning it, more people will see the library website as a “branch” of our library and will find it easy to use and helpful.

I’m also working on some new reading lists to (hopefully) help our staff guide kids to some great books that we have to offer in a variety of genres.  This became a project for me from two ends – the first was from a workshop we had a few weeks ago by Becky Spratford, a reader’s advisory librarian from the Berwyn Public Library in Berwyn, Illinois.  The other end, was a request from a new librarian on our staff who is interested in learning a little more about our collection, specifically something Becky spoke of – “the backlist.”  Great books that patrons might be unaware of; books that will be most likely be on the shelf rather than something like The Hunger Games that you would need to put a hold on.  So I’m up to my ears in work on the computer, but each slow step is getting me closer to creating a better library experience for patrons, and after all isn’t that what we’re here for?