An Awesome App for Your Book Club

Have you heard of the Book Club App by Book Movement? My book club started using it and it has been so super helpful and fun to use! 

(This is where I tell you that this is not a sponsored post - I just think it's a really neat app!)

Book Club is a free app available for Apple devices (doesn't look like it's available for Android). There are links within the app to purchase books via Apple iBooks or Amazon, but you can use the app for free. I learned about it on Book Riot and their post lists several other apps that might be great for using with book clubs. We decided to try Book Club and it's really worked for us. 

Here are the things I love about it: 

Schedule your meetings, RSVP, and remind everyone all in the app. No longer are we all emailing each other a few days before asking who's hosting book club or trying desperately to remember to send a reminder email out. When we schedule our next meeting, I put it in the app and everyone has access to the information (date, time, who's hosting) right on their phones. Bonus: Book Movement sends automatic reminders to everyone, so we no longer have to think about that. 

Discover books and keep track of potential books your book club might like to read. This was always a struggle for us: choosing our next book. We'd have lists and lists of suggestions one month and then the next month we couldn't remember what was on our lists. The app allows you to save possible future books AND to vote anonymously, making it easy to give everyone a vote without putting anyone on the spot. 

The app automatically keeps track of your past books and meeting dates. I input the older information from before we started using the app, but now as each date passes the books get recorded in our Past Books section. I get a lot of satisfaction of keeping track of what we've read and I love that this keeps the meeting dates, too. No need for a "book club historian" if you have this app.

We've been using this with my personal book club, but I think it has potential for library book clubs, too, particularly if you have a group of regulars that come very frequently. It could be useful even just as a tool for letting everyone know about upcoming meetings and upcoming books. Once you create a book club, you can email members or share a code with them so that they can connect to your particular book club. 

Do you use anything to keep your book club organized? What works for you? 

Seven Scary Middle Grade Books

It's October! Around here that means the wind's blowing colder, it's getting dark earlier, and lots of people are in the mood for a good scary story. Something we learned quickly as we were visiting schools for booktalks: kids LOVE scary stories. Not every kid, of course, but lots of them. So today I've got seven of my favorite scary stories for your middle grade readers. I would love to hear about your favorites in comments!

Doll Bones by Holly Black (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2013. 244 pages). Zach, Poppy, and Alice are best friends, getting together to weave awesome adventure stories starring their action figures, a pastime that none of their fellow middle-schoolers would probably understand. But things are starting to change between them and when the end of the game seems nigh, the girls visit Zach in the middle of the night to tell him that Poppy is being haunted by a mysterious china doll who claims that it is made from the ground up bones of a murdered girl. The friends must set off to figure out where the murdered girl lived and bury the doll or risk being cursed forever. This is the perfect fall read with a chilling atmosphere and a solid friendship story at its heart.

Hoodoo by Ronald Smith (Clarion, 2015. 208 pages). Twelve-year-old Hoodoo Hatcher was born into a magic family, but he hasn’t yet figured out how to harness his powers. When a spirit arrives in their woods, Hoodoo has a vision telling him that it’s up to him to defeat this demon, but how can he when he doesn’t have his magic? This is an atmospheric story with some seriously creepy magic going on. I would especially recommend this one for fans of historical and Southern gothic stories.

The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste (Algonquin, 2015. 234 pages). Eleven-year-old Corinne doesn’t believe in jumbies – what folks call supernatural creatures on her island home. But when she goes into the mahogany forest to get back the necklace the village boys stole from her… something follows her out. This is one of my absolutely favorites to booktalk. It's a strong friendship story, as well as being a terrifying tale of supernatural creatures. Readers who liked Doll Bones will love this book.

The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier (Abrams, 2014. 350 pages). When two abandoned siblings find work at an English manor house, they quickly realize that all is not right in the house. People there have awful nightmares every night and each morning Molly finds muddy footprints that don’t match the feet of anyone living in the house. Can they save themselves and the family from the night gardener? From the warnings of townspeople that no one enters "the sour woods" to the dulling of Molly's bright red hair as she continues to live in the house, this book is filled with little details that add up to an un-put-downable scary story.

Small Spaces by Katherine Arden (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2018. 218 pages). When Ollie’s class school bus breaks down on the way back from a field trip, the creepy scarecrows in the fields start to look all too real. Their teacher goes for help and the bus driver has some strange advice for the kids: “Best get moving. At nightfall they’ll come for the rest of you.” And then Ollie’s broken wristwatch displays a terrifying message: RUN. Katherine Arden, author of popular adult fantasy books, is a master of atmosphere and she brings that to this middle grade book, too. There were so many passages that I just read over and over for the shiver down my spine before I raced on, needing to know what happens next.

Spirit Hunters by Ellen Oh (HarperCollins, 2017. 276 pages). When Harper and her family move to a new home, rumors are that their new house is haunted. But Harper doesn’t believe them… until her little brother starts acting very strange. Could he be possessed by a spirit? And how can Harper save him? This creepy mystery from We Need Diverse Books founder Ellen Oh totally reminded me of the scary books I loved to read as a tween. Details of Harper's Korean-American family and portrayals of the racist microaggressions Harper faces make this title stand out in a sea of haunted house books.

A Path Begins (The Thickety #1) by J.A. White (Katherine Tegen Books, 2014. 488 pages). When Kara was a little girl, her mother was convicted of witchcraft and hanged. Now, Kara and her family are outcasts. One day, a strange bird appears to Kara and leads her into the Thickety – the enchanted forest that no one is supposed to enter – and Kara finds her mother’s spell book. She knows that she should leave it behind or destroy it – it’s illegal to have magic books – but it’s the one thing she has of her mother’s. So Kara takes it out of the Thickety. And that’s just the beginning of the story. I've written before about how much I love this series of books. If you have readers who are into magic and witchy stories, this is a can't-miss!

Ooh I hope you've found the perfect scary tale for the young readers in your life here, and I'd love to hear about your favorite scary reads! Tell me all about 'em in the comments!

Lucky Duck Collection

Tons of people want to read what's popular right now. So how do we get these popular books into the hands of our patrons who want to read them when they have long holds lists?

A photo of our Lucky Duck bookshelf with books and a display sign that explains the checkout rules for the books.

One thing I've implemented is our Lucky Duck collection. Lots of libraries have something like this - I've seen it called Lucky Day, Bestsellers, and Bestseller Express among other names. Basically, it's a collection of bestsellers and popular titles that have special checkout rules to ensure that they're on the shelf as frequently as possible. In our case, that means they check out for 7 days with no renewals and no holds can be placed on them. If a patron comes in and sees the book they want on the shelf and they want to read it right away, they're a lucky duck and can skip the long holds line!

Photo of Lucky Duck book Lethal White by Robert Galbrait. The sticker reads "Lucky Duck Collection. 7 day checkout. No renewals. Limit 2."

We still have copies of these books in our regular collections so you can certainly be placed on the holds list and wait your turn. I still purchase additional copies of popular books as the holds lists grow. But we wanted to give patrons a chance that the book that they want RIGHT NOW might actually be on the shelf for them if they came to visit us. For some popular books, a wait can be as long as six months until your hold comes in, and pretty frequently the wait list is at least a couple of months.

My goals in implementing this collection are:

• Increased patron satisfaction - patrons being able to get the hot new book without having to wait months for their name to come up on the holds list. 
• Increased staff satisfaction when they're able to show patrons a Lucky Duck copy instead of constantly telling them that they have to wait. 
• Increased visits to  the library - if patrons know there's a chance that the hot new book will be there for them, maybe they will visit the library more often to check. 
• Smaller or more quickly moving holds lists - maybe some of the patrons on the holds list will check out the Lucky Duck copy instead. 
• Increased circulation - since these popular books only check out for 7 days instead of 28 days like our normal collection, there's the potential to get LOTS of circs from each copy, making it a great investment for our library. 

Some issues I've had with this collection are: 

There's no way with our ILS to have patrons who check out these copies automatically come off the holds lists. In order for the specific circulation rules to apply (the biggie is that these copies do not satisfy holds), they have to be placed on a separate record. This is not ideal, but even if a hold does come in for a patron who's read a Lucky Duck copy, the worst case is that it sits on the hold shelf for a week and then goes to the next patron.

Because we don't charge fines, we don't have any consequences to try to ensure that the books actually come back in 7 days. I've seen some libraries charge higher fines on these items to try to get them back on the shelves. I was worried that people would just ignore the 7-day checkout, but for the most part they do seem to get back on the shelves quickly! 

I'm still trying to figure out a system for when to order a copy for the Lucky Duck collection. Since previously I would order an additional copy when our holds list hit 5 holds per item, that's what I'm looking at for ordering Lucky Duck copies. But it's not ideal - some authors I know are going to be so popular that I'm ordering enough copies from the start so that the holds ratio is not getting to five copies. Now that we have this collection, I will probably adjust my ordering of these known popular authors.

And I haven't yet begun to think about how/when to weed this collection. I guess when normal copies of the books are appearing regularly on the shelves, it'll be time to take the Lucky Duck copy out and either make it a circulating copy or weed it.

One reason I really wanted to try out this type of collection was so that we could have some popular adult titles on the shelf at our new Digital Branch, but circulation of browsing books has been low out there so far. I have to keep in mind that it's only been open about 6 weeks, so lots of folks have not yet discovered it. And I've found that many people hear "Galena Digital Branch" and think there are NO BOOKS there, which isn't true. I did a Facebook Live video last week when I brought out some new teen and children's books and I might try doing more of that to try to raise some awareness. We may find that folks prefer to just wait and pick up their holds at the branch (which they are doing PLENTY!), which will be fine, too.

So far, I'm seeing these books getting tons of checkouts and staff have been very enthusiastic about it, so it seems like it's working well for my library right now!

Do you have a bestsellers or similar collection at your library? How do patrons like it? Do you have a system for what titles to add? 

So We Opened a Branch

Last month, I didn't blog very much. One of the reasons is that we were very busy opening up our very first branch library. Our new Galena Digital Branch is located in a restored historic home and it's a very small and cozy space, so it has a VERY small physical collection, but it does have physical books there. It also provides internet access, space for individuals to work or groups to meet, a play area for children, devices for check out and use within the library, and a Makerspace with a 3-D printer, laser etcher, sewing machines, and more.

This has been a huge undertaking on the part of our director and it's her vision that's shaped this wonderful new space, providing a much-needed access point for the more rural parts of our county. Staff throughout the library have worked on parts of this branch and put in an amazing amount of effort to get everything ready. From a collection development standpoint, it's been a really interesting project to work on. We are learning every day about what folks want from this branch location and what's going to be our best bet with a physical collection up there.

Here is our tiny Children's Area - two bookshelves, a small table and play items. 

We started with children's books. Knowing that young kids may not have the ability or level of access needed to utilize digital materials, we wanted to make sure to have physical books on the shelf for them. Board books, picture books, and easy readers are the most popular with our patrons up there so far. We also have a collection of children's and teen fiction and nonfiction. We got a great deal on a couple of large Junior Library Guild subscriptions which help ensure that there is always something brand new on the shelves up there.

Our tiny Teen and Adult collections. Teen shelves on the left and adult on the right.

Since we opened a couple of weeks ago, we have also debuted a new Lucky Duck collection of best sellers and popular books that have holds lists. We have a collection of Lucky Duck at the central library and a small collection of them at the Digital Branch to try to ensure that we also have some popular adult books on the shelves. A patron requested some large print to browse, so I sent a small collection of new large print books up there, as well.

The print collection at the branch is almost entirely a floating collection. Everything is processed identically to the central library books and we float books up to live on Galena's shelves as needed. They get changed to a temporary collection in our ILS and we put red masking tape on the spines as a visual queue of where they go when they are returned.

And patrons can request any circulating item to be delivered to the branch from our central library. Often we can provide 24-hour turnaround.

And of course we are emphasizing the digital collection, as well. We provide ebooks, downloadable audiobooks, and downloadable media through Overdrive and Hoopla. We are also really utilizing our databases and I'm trying to determine what our most-needed digital resources are and provide training for staff. We don't have space for a physical collection of test prep materials, but staff can show patrons how to access Testing and Education Reference Center and Gale Courses for SAT practice, etc.

I'm really excited that we have been able to open this new location and I'm really excited to see where it goes from here and how we can creatively fill the needs of our patrons with such limited physical space.

What I'm Reading

I'm in the middle of a bunch of great books again! Here's what I'm reading right now:

American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures edited by America Ferrera (Gallery Books, 336 pages). This collection of essays features tons of star writers like Roxane Gay, Diane Guerrero, and Lin-Manuel Miranda addressing the topic of culture in America. America Ferrera writes the opening essay and it's super, talking about where her name comes from and her struggle to find a place for herself as an actress in the stereotyping landscape of American film and TV.

New Poets of Native Nations edited by Heid E. Erdrich (Graywolf Press, 2018). I am NOT a big poetry reader, but I have been trying to read more Native authors this year. I picked this one up and have already fallen in love with some of these poets and sought out their individual publications. There are some really powerful poems in here, worth perusing for poetry lovers and poetry dabblers alike.

Temper by Nicky Drayden (Harper Voyager, 2018). I picked this up to peruse it* and fell in love with the world-building. It's set in a magical Africa where (for some reason I don't know yet) people are born as twins and get proximity symptoms if they're too far away from their twin. The seven deadly sins are divided up among each twin. And there is magic and machinations are banned and... I just can't wait to figure out more of this intriguing world.

And of course I've got an audio going:

The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers by Maxwell King, read by LeVar Burton (Oasis Audio, 2018). I needed a new audiobook for a couple of short road trips this week and when I saw that LeVar Burton narrates this biography I've been meaning to pick up, I was SOLD. It's a genius pairing: the voice of Reading Rainbow reading a biography of a man who affected millions of children's lives through television. The 80s kid in me is very pleased.

*I've been taking a leaf from Robin's book and checking out tons of new books to peruse, knowing I'm not going to fully read all of them. The ones I love and want to finish, I'll hold on to. The rest I'll read the first chapter or so and return with a better idea of what's new in our collection.

What have YOU been reading lately?

Small Spaces

Kids love scary books. It's a thing. And if you're looking for a great scary book to hand to middle grade readers, I have one for you.

In Small Spaces by Katherine Arden introduces us to Olivia, an eleven-year-old girl reeling from the loss of her mother. Ollie's pulled away from everything - she avoids the other kids at school, she's quit all the activities she used to do. Ollie just wants to be alone with her books, and on this last glorious, sunshiney afternoon of the fall, that's what she's headed to do. But when she stumbles across a distraught woman about to throw a book - a book! - into the river, Ollie stops her and takes the book.

As Ollie becomes entranced by the story in the book - a story about two brothers and a sinister deal made with a man called "the smiling man" - she starts to realize that the story might be based in reality. Her sixth-grade class is taking a trip to a nearby farm and when their teacher reluctantly tells the class about some of the ghost stories surrounding the farm, they sound eerily familiar.

And then on the way home from the field trip, the bus breaks down close to dark. The creepy bus driver warns Ollie "Best get moving. At nightfall they'll come for the rest of you." And Ollie's long-broken digital watch, a keepsake from her mother, starts displaying a countdown and one word: RUN.

(Is there anything creepier than someone in a story getting a message that just says RUN? Instant panic, amiright?)

If you've read Katherine Arden's adult fantasy novels The Bear and the Nightingale and The Girl in the Tower, you know she is a master at creating atmosphere and she brings this mastery into this middle grade story as well. From the weather changing to the descriptions of small creepy things like the leering scarecrows in the field and the recalcitrant new bus driver, Arden paints a picture for the reader. There were so many passages that I just read over and over for the shiver down my spine before I raced on, needing to know what happens next.

And the level of scariness is a good fit for this age group. This is a book that I wouldn't hesitate to hand to upper elementary students looking for a scare but not yet ready for the violence that often comes with scary stories. It delivers a good eerie, sinister vibe without getting graphic.

Readalikes:

Readers who enjoy a scary story with tons of atmosphere might also enjoy The Riverman by Aaron Starmer (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014).

The tone and atmosphere of this book also really reminded me of a couple of my favorites: The Thickety by J.A. White (Katherine Tegan, 2014) and Doll Bones by Holly Black (McElderry, 2013).

Book info: 

Small Spaces by Katherine Arden. Grades 4-6. Putnam, September 2018. 224 pages. Reviewed from ARC provided by publisher.

What My Book Club's Been Loving

Hey, I'm an Amazon affiliate, which means that if you purchase items after clicking the links on my site I get a small commission. 

Several years ago, my sister-in-law proposed starting a family book club. I posted about it way back in 2015 when we first started and we've been going strong, meeting nearly every month since then. Our book club has grown beyond strictly "family", but I consider them all part of my family, so we've kept the name.

We typically meet once a month and rotate who is hosting. Our meetings are typically on a weeknight evening and the host provides dinner and wine. Two of our ladies have young kids and they are always welcomed with joy - although we DO talk about books at book club, it's also a great time for us to get together and check in and snuggle babies and tickle toddlers.

As we've continued to meet, I think we've found out what types of books different book club members enjoy and what we all tend to gravitate towards. Our favorite books are stories of women and we often have conversations about feminism and female life. Some members prefer lighter books, some prefer heavier books, and I think we end up with a pretty good mix. Here are some of the books that have provoked the best discussions.

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (Random House, 2018). This was our most recent read and we found it absolutely riveting. It's the true story of a young Idaho woman raised by off-the-grid end-of-days preppers with no schooling (not even homeschooling, really). Westover eventually realized that the only ticket out of her abusive family life was to go to college, so she taught herself to take the ACT, got into BYU and eventually earned a PhD from Cambridge. Our book club was amazed by her story and we talked for a long time about the difficulties she faced, the hardship of having no power as a woman in her family's culture, how schools might or might not "brainwash" students, what it would be like to life without modern medicine or hospitals, and more. 

Necessary Lies by Diane Chamberlain (St. Martin's Press, 2013). This was my first Diane Chamberlain, but it won't be my last. This is a historical fiction story based on real events. In the 1960s poor women were sometimes sterilized, sometimes without their consent, if they had real or perceived disabilities. Ostensibly for their own good, but also to keep the state's welfare bills down. This story follows a newbie social worker and a poor pregnant teen as they deal with the ramifications of this program. This one was a particularly good match for our book club because among us we have a social worker, a lawyer, a doctor, and two pharmacists. We all had lots of opinions to share about this little bit of American history. 

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (Penguin, 2017). This story, set in the planned community of Shaker Heights, OH, explores the concept of belonging (and not belonging) in many different ways. A custody battle over a Chinese-American infant threatens to split the town apart and we had a deep conversation about culture and nurturing children. Further reading for book clubs who discussed this book is the upcoming memoir All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung, adopted by a white couple in infancy, she decides to search for her Korean-American birth parents when she gets pregnant with her first child. 

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (Viking, 2017). Eleanor is, of course, NOT completely fine, but her truth is slowly revealed to the reader as we navigate her quest to meet and marry the man with whom she's fallen in love-at-first-sight. We talked a lot about the different characters in this book and how they related to Eleanor, as well as the reveals throughout the book and how they made us feel. This is a must for lovers of character-driven stories. 

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult (Ballantine, 2016). When African-American labor and delivery nurse Ruth Jefferson is requested to be reassigned by the white supremacist parents currently giving birth, things get complicated when the baby goes into distress and Ruth is the only one in the room. The baby dies and Ruth is accused of murder, starting a court case that will change her life and the lives of many others. This was a book that encouraged some deep discussion about race and privilege in our multigenerational, varying degrees of wokeness book club. 

What books have started the best discussions in your book clubs or among your friends or family?

Diversify Your Booktalks - YOUR SUGGESTIONS!

Last week, I had the pleasure of presenting a breakout session at the Indiana Library Federation's Youth Services Conference. This conference (formerly called CYPD) is one of my favorite learning experiences for youth librarians - it's completely youth-centered, they always have amazing authors, and they have great sessions with practical ideas for programs and services. It was my pleasure to join them briefly to talk about diverse books!

Of course, in a 50-minute session that included info on resources for seeking out diverse titles to add to your booktalking and reader's advisory rosters, I could only include so many books. So I asked attendees to chime in and suggest their own favorites. And I now present our compiled list!

Here's the handout from the session, complete with everyone's additions. Y'all doubled the books I had on my list and added some really awesome titles that I'm so glad you shared! This is a GREAT list to work from if you want to read more diverse books.

And for everyone playing along at home, feel free to leave your suggestions for great diverse books you love to include in your booktalks, reader's advisory, and displays. Comments are open below!

The Sun Does Shine

So, a few years ago I read Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson's book about his work with the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice serving the poor and wrongly condemned. One client that he writes a lot about in that book is Anthony Ray Hinton, a man condemned to Alabama's Death Row for a crime he didn't commit. In 2015, after living on Death Row for 30 years, the charges against Hinton were dropped and he went free. The Sun Does Shine is his story in his own words.

You don't need me to tell you about this book - it's Oprah's latest Book Club pick and hopefully it's everywhere you look. What you might need me to tell you is that it is a compelling, readable story that's definitely worth picking up. This is one of those books that should be required reading for all Americans.

Hinton's the first one to tell you that he's not been perfect his whole life. He went behind the back of his girlfriend, dating her sister on the side, he even stole a car and served time for it (after he brought the car back and confessed). But when Hinton was accused of robbery and murder even though he had a solid alibi, he was astonished to be convicted and sentenced to death.

Hinton's book really puts the reader in his place as he writes about life on Death Row. He writes about trying to comfort his fellow inmates when they were upset, even though he couldn't physically go to them. He writes about the book club he started so that Death Row inmates might have something to occupy their minds besides their own impending deaths. He writes about banging on the bars of his cell whenever an inmate was taken to the electric chair (and later lethal injection) so that inmate would know he was not alone.

It's riveting, terrifying stuff and this book made me cry and it made me shake with anger. It is well worth the read for anyone, but especially anyone who read Bryan Stevenson's book will not want to miss this book.

Readalikes:

For more about the Equal Justice Initiative and Bryan Stevenson's work with Hinton and other inmates, don't miss Just Mercy (2014, Spiegel & Grau). It's written with less immediacy than Hinton's memoir, but it's a fascinating look at the failures of our justice system.

Readers also may be interested in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander (2010, The New Press).

For another devastating true story of an innocent person convicted of a crime, pick up A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America by T. Christian Miller & Ken Armstrong (2018, Crown). This nonfiction book tells the story of a young woman who was raped and reported it but the police did not believe her story and accused her of false reporting. In fact, she had been raped and the rapist went on to attack more women.

A Day in the Life

What does a Collection Development Librarian do all day long? Read on to find out. Click on the Day in the Life tag to find more (most recently for my collection development position, but older ones are from my Youth Services days).

8:00am - Arrive at work and start checking in books for Our New Branch! We're opening our first branch in a couple of weeks and it was time to get the books we'd ordered up there.

8:30am - While our processor keeps working on checking in new books, I decide I should process the weekly magazines that have arrived so I can go ahead and get those out to patrons who might be waiting for them. To do this, I barcode them, input the new issues into the system, mark our spreadsheet with the issues that have arrived, and put a "current issue" sticker on them so patrons know they don't check out yet. Newest issues of magazines can be read in the library, but only later issues can check out.

9:00am - I help a staff member collect the book drop (we always have two people get it together for safety reasons). When we come back in, a patron's waiting to use the meeting room, so I head down there and unlock it for her. Even though I'm in a behind the scenes position now, we all pitch in to help patrons whenever needed.

9:15am - Back in the office, I resume checking in the new books for the branch. Because it's a floating collection, the books are cataloged and processed just like the books for our central location, but they'll circulate as part of the branch collection for as long as the branch wants them. Patrons at either location can place holds for materials at either collection.

9:50am - I start setting up a placement experiment on Collection HQ for the titles that have been mentioned on our staff blog. Each month I set up this program to track the circulation of those specific titles so I can gather data on how our blog might be affecting circulation.

10:25am - Our Marketing Coordinator stops by for a chat about the blog - we talk about new users recently added and troubleshoot why the RSS feed is not working after changing the blog's URL.

11:00am - Time to head to the branch to deliver the new books! My staff in Collection Development come along since they have not yet seen the new location. They head back after about an hour, but I stay to try to get the books in some kind of order. When our new Branch Manager takes over, she may rearrange or relocate them, but I at least want her to be able to make sense of what we have. We have a VERY small physical collection since it's a tiny space. We're concentrating on digital access and our Makerspace up there.

1:15pm - Back at the central library, I now head home for lunch.

2:15pm - I'm back from lunch and I work on an Overdrive order of ebooks and e-audiobooks. I try to place an Overdrive order every week, even if it's a small one. Having new stuff added regularly encourages patrons to log in regularly and see what's new. I've found that it's really working to increase our circulation of our ebooks.

3:00pm - I finish up the Collection HQ placement experiment.

3:30pm - I need to investigate changing the email we use as contact for our Gale Courses and as I'm looking into this I fall into a little rabbit hole of marketing materials for our databases. I start brainstorming some ideas about how to increase their usage and make some notes about ways to market them.

4:00pm - Our new Branch Manager stops by and I show her the photos I took of the books at the branch and explain how I arranged them and basically how the collection works and what we think the procedure will be for moving materials around and handling holds both at the branch and the central library. Since this is our first branch, this is all new to us!

4:45pm - We wrap up our conversation and I have just enough time to check Library's Journal's Book Pulse and add some books to my weekly carts. I try to place orders once a week, but I work on the carts a little bit each day.

5:10pm - Got that under control, time to head home!