Connecting Kids to Digital Books During COVID

Guess what? After a few years' hiatus, I'm back as a regular contributor to the ALSC Blog! And my first post over there is about Connecting Kids to Digital Books During the COVID Pandemic. I know that many libraries' physical locations are closed right now, so how do we reach out to kids and promote the great digital books we have on offer?

Click over to the ALSC Blog to find some ideas and comment to let me know how you're connecting kids to books right now!

Library Life During COVID-19

So, things have been a bit bananas lately, eh?

Virtual storytime! Photo shows my toddler nieces watching a video of me reading a book

My library closed to the public on Monday, March 16 and we had an all-day staff meeting (keeping appropriately socially distanced from each other - we literally were sitting at eight separate tables for our leadership meeting) to inform staff and come up with a plan. Leadership brainstormed all the things we needed to think about and make changes to for when we closed. We ended up officially closing our physical locations that night and are currently closed through March 30.

It's super important to note that as of this writing, not every library building is closed and there are many still expecting staff to report in ways that I think are really dangerous. The American Library Association has released a statement have recommended that academic, public, and school library leaders evaluate closing libraries to the public to prevent the spread of COVID-19. We can continue to serve patrons without demanding that staff risk their lives by reporting to work. If a library in your community is still open or still requiring staff to report, speak up to library Board members and funding bodies (county or city councils, mayors, etc.) and tell them that for the safety of all, library staff should not be reporting.

How are we serving our patrons while our physical buildings are closed? 

There's an important distinction to be made here. Our physical buildings are closed, but that does not mean that library service has stopped. Our digital collections are available and we're working on making virtual programming available.

Ensure Access

One big task that we have on our plates right now is to make sure that as many people have access to our digital materials as possible. I worked with our ILS this week to extend due dates and hold pickup dates for our patrons, including anything checked out since 1/1/19, even if it had gone to lost. We also extended card expiration dates to the end of the year.

At this time we do not want anyone blocked from access to our digital materials. We are already a fine free library, so for us this includes forgiving outstanding fees and finding ways to work around lost materials and staying accessible so that if patrons have issues with their accounts (don't know their PIN, expired card, etc.) we can help them resolve those issues as quickly as possible.

We also provide online borrower registration. Typically, that gives new patrons 90-day access to our digital material without having to come inside the building to get a card. We extended the 90 days to provide access through the end of 2020.

Be Present

Facebook is our main source of patron interaction and we're making sure to check notifications and messages frequently. We are also checking our general information email regularly and staff have been assigned to check our various voicemails and respond to patrons. We are also offering programming as best we can.

Behind the scenes at the library! Photo shows library staff recording a puppet show and song on the ukulele

For children's programming, that's included recording story readalouds and storytimes ourselves, as well as sharing resources that others are providing.

Many publishers are responding to the COVID-19 school closures by offering special permissions for digital sharing of their books. Author Kate Messner has been collecting these policies on her website, which you can view here. With publishers doing their best to meet us halfway while still honoring their legal copyright contracts, librarians need to be doing our best to hold to these copyright standards when sharing materials online.

Some publishers are stipulating that materials only be shared in a closed group, such as a Google Classroom, etc. that's only available to a subset of students. My library hasn't explored what this looks like for us yet - so far we have been concentrating on titles from publishers that have offered more flexible options for public libraries. But it's something we're thinking about!

To round out what we're able to offer to patrons, we're also frequently posting resources from other sources that parents and kids may find interesting and useful. There are tons of folks and organizations offering virtual programs right now. Some of my favorites include:

• LUNCH DOODLES with Mo Willems from The Kennedy Center
• Home Safari from the Cincinnati Zoo
• Music classes from Candy Mountain Music (she offered a super cute St. Patrick's Day class this week and will begin MWF classes next week)
• Draw Every Day with JJK - drawing classes from Jarrett Krosoczka, author of the Lunch Lady graphic novels
• Storytime from Space - stories from the International Space Station

I'm sure our list of virtual programming will grow as we navigate the coming weeks. Working from home when you're used to serving the community is super weird, even for someone like me who is mostly behind the scenes at my job now. I have found that staying in touch with my colleagues is really helpful to me and keeping track of tasks I want to accomplish in my bullet journal is helpful to me. And I guess we'll just see how things go as we get used to a "new normal". 

How are you living your library life during COVID-19?

I'd love to hear about the things you're doing or planning. What struggles are you having right now? What innovative services are you coming up with? 

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.