#SaturdayLibrarian + Programming = Crazy

We haven’t provided very many Saturday programs in the past, but with more and more patrons requesting Saturday story times, we’ve decided to offer something once a month when a storyteller is working a Saturday shift.  If today’s crowd was any indication, we’ll be doing something a lot more on Saturday mornings.
I had 65+ kids registered for a Saturday morning dance party that began at 10:30 am and ended at 11:15 for children 5 and under.  15 minutes before our program began I ran to our large meeting space to set up the sound system.  We share the space with our township (including the government access channel) which graciously allows us to use their sound system – awesome, right?  Until, I set everything up and my playlist on the iPod was only making crackling and static noises through the speakers.  With ten minutes before the program was supposed to begin I was rifling through my desk looking for a bank CD to copy the music, of course not finding any, but I did find my CD for previous dance parties so I grabbed that, our old school boom box, and found the wireless mic for the sound system.  Thankfully, I was able to place the mic in front of boom box, which allowed the speaker system to pick up the sound.  Meanwhile, my co-worker was cleaning up a pee accident in the children’s department… it started out as one of those mornings.
But in the end, we had 40 kids show up with about 30-35 parents and I think everyone had a good time, although most parents wouldn’t dance!  I danced for 45 minutes straight, sweating the whole time!  The parents all stood around the edges of the room, photographing their kids or staring at me dancing.  If anyone has any great tips for encouraging dancing among adults, please let me know, this is a continual problem in our dance parties.  The kids seemed to have fun and burn off some of that cabin fever and many came over to the library afterward to play and check out books.