Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Bartow Library Status September 2020

I need to announce that the library where I work opened to Curbside level service today.

What this means is:

  1. Patrons cannot enter the library (yet). Our computers and study rooms/meeting rooms are unavailable.
  2. Patrons CAN call to place library items on Hold for Pickup outside the library door. We will have a cart set up where they can retrieve the items when they call us to say when they are there. We have a driveway at the door so they can just pull up like drive-thru.
  3. Patrons can send us requests to print and copy materials, and also scan and fax documents to other locations. We would have to pickup their items to copy and return them via that doorway cart. We will charge for copies and for faxing (scanning is free, yay Internet).
  4. Patrons may not be able to browse our New Fiction/Non-Fiction shelves, but we provide notebooks of current release information left at the doorway cart so they can see what's available and call us to request those titles for Curbside.

It's not a full opening, but given the risks of indoor spread of COVID, this is the safest we can be while giving our Bartow community more support than we've been able the last five months.

Saturday, September 5, 2020

Going Online With Library Patrons

 The problem with the ongoing pandemic - how it restricts the availability of indoor locations, the problems of cleaning contact surfaces that include TABLES and STUDY ROOMS as well as KEYBOARDS and MICE of our public computers - is how to make the library effective for our patrons when our patrons can't come in.

One thing we are doing at Bartow Library has been creating online videos and activity links. We did a lot of Online Storytime readings for our youth literacy and read-along families. Our librarian in charge of the book discussions has been using Zoom since May and has been gaining more chat members.

She's also involved in teaching our exercise and Tai Chi classes, so she's asked us to make and present a YouTube video to share with the class enrollees she still has signed up.

So I just wanted to share that here as well, try to get the word out, and let any library users know your public library near you should be doing similar things you can follow!


Keep an eye out for more stuff!