Congrats to YFS!

Congratulations to YFS for their nomination for the 2021 WLA Programming Innovation Award! We all know what an amazing job the YFS team did responding to the pandemic, especially the KPL Kids to Go boxes. Heather reports that from June 2020 to August 2021, the YFS team put together 6,456 to go boxes. That's a lot of community joy! Thanks to you all!

Thanks to Outreach for attending United Way's Born to Read Trail ribbon cutting at Columbus Park this week! The kids were thrilled to see you!

The remediation of the broken sewer pipe issue at Uptown continues on Monday. There may be an interruption of service to the upstairs public toilet. 

Welcome to Ben and Joel, our 2 new RTG's! 

Did you know that Martha is a photographer? A talented one, too. Her art show opens next week at the Racine Art Museum. Congratulations, Martha!

Don't forget about Thanksgiving in September on September 23rd. More details to come.

A lot of people are on vacation this coming week. Here are a few to note:

Dan is off all week- please contact Jason in his absence.
Michelle is out all week
Linda and Sandy are out Thursday and Friday
Rob is out Monday

I am out September 1-8 (Wednesday to Wednesday) . I will be in the area and available for emergencies- please call if you need me.

Enjoy the summer weekend, everyone!

Barb

Paycheck Protection Policy up for September Board Vote

Remember, Monday August 23rd we begin wearing masks in public areas of the building and on Outreach vehicles when patrons are present. To be clear, if you are at NS at 8am, you can move through the building without a mask. The mask requirement is  only in public areas when patrons are present. This is the staff's majority decision. Please honor your co-workers' wishes.

As the Delta variant continues to spread and as in-person school resumes, we expect more of us will be exposed to someone who tests positive. So Michelle will refresh our memories on just what to do about coming to work should we discover that someone close to us has tested positive. Look for that refresher shortly.

At this point, the federal programs that provided paycheck protection to people who needed to quarantine, or care for someone who needed to quarantine, have expired and I have not heard about any movement toward bringing those programs back. The City has not talked about any such program, either. As we enter the last few months of the year, most of us have used a good portion of our vacation and part time folks don't have sick leave benefits.  We understand that you may feel more vulnerable as we approach the fall season, especially  parents  who may be faced with erratic daycare and school closings in response to infection outbreak.  Michelle and I are drafting a proposal to the Library Board to create a temporary safeguard program to help cushion staff members who are faced with an isolation order. We'll get that in front of the Board at their September meeting. 

On September 21st and 22nd, David Vinjumari of Thirdway Brand Trainers will visit SW and NS libraries to evaluate our use of space and advise us how to create more modern spaces that serve the interests of patrons in a post-COVID world. David is the author of a 2019 PLA space planning manual and has been focusing on how libraries can respond to the new needs of patrons who are increasingly working and studying remotely, and are simultaneously worried about the pandemic yet desiring shared public spaces. Thirdway's Space Audit will deliver a full report of recommendations on how we can use the spaces we already have to give our community exactly what they need as a "third place."  This project is funded in part through a grant from the Wisconsin Humanities Council.

We'll be interviewing two excellent candidates for the Programs and Events Librarian position on Tuesday.

Bright Spot Nominations this week include:

From Stephanie:

"I would like to nominate the Simmons and Uptown Team for the Bright Spot Award. Lately, we have seen multiple patrons who are living with mental illness coming into our libraries (and sometimes screaming outside of them) and the SI/UP Team has been working hard to show compassion and wisdom when handling these sometimes very difficult situations. On Saturday the 14th, we had a perfect example of a very positive and impactful interaction where Simmons staff collaborated with the Kenosha Crisis Center and was able to get a patron the help they needed. It was a perfect example of everyone being in the right place at the right time and utilizing their experience and training with a great ending."

From Barb:

Thanks to Max for completing a federal Emergency Connectivity Grant application in the amount of $54,527  to bring more hotspots and Chromebooks to patrons in need and to outfit our Outreach vehicles with more powerful cellular modem/routers.

Mask Mandates, Library Use Trends, and Several Bright Spot Nominations

The new mask mandate poll results are very interesting! Be sure to add your voice to this important decision. Check your email for the link to a new Google Form that asks whether we should mandate masks in public areas, in staff areas, or both. (Yes, this is the second survey- thanks for participating again!) So far we have 38 responses. That's 50 short of full participation. Let's be sure this decision that affects everyone is decided by a true majority.

Some of you are stating in the poll comments that a mask mandate for staff should be matched by a mask mandate for the public. While I have the authority to make staff rules, I need a higher authority to create mandates for the public. The Library Board can make that decision or a local government leader like the Mayor or County Executive can declare a mask mandate for their jurisdiction. Clearly it is easier for us as staff to respond to angry patrons that we are following the city rules when we ask them to wear a mask. Several alderpersons have asked to add a mask mandate to the Council agenda scheduled for the first week in September. The issue did not make next week's council agenda. Our next Library Board meeting is September 14th, after the Council takes up the issue. Let's see how the Council votes and we can take it up with our board, if necessary.

If you've been reading the library board packets or attending board meetings, you've noticed that I'm presenting graphs comparing our 2021 statistics to 2019, the last full year of "normal" library use. Circulation has rebounded better than library visits, and children's library materials are returning to normal use faster than adult materials. The trend is a little different for the SHARE libraries overall. Here's a message from Jim Novy at Lakeshores Library System that summarizes the comparison between use of libraries across the whole SHARE membership 2019 vs. 2021.
"Overall circulation is hovering around 75% when comparing July of 2019 to July of 2021.
DVDs are way down, both in circulation ( 47% of 2019 ) and items added ( 56% of 2019 ). This is likely due to a combination of fewer being released, some releases only being available on streaming platforms and an increase in the use of streaming platforms by patrons.
Book circulation is hovering around 85% of what we did in 2019.
If we break book circulation out by item category 2, we see that adult circulation is closer to 90% and juvenile circulation is closer to 80%. That trend of adult items circulation recovering faster than juvenile circulation is present in most other media types as well.
Audiobooks are down more than print books, whereas playaways are doing comparatively well. This has been a slow trend for a while as many new vehicles lack CD players so patrons are moving to playaways or downloaded audiobooks.
Overall, I think what we're seeing mirrors larger trends that have been reported throughout society. The pandemic has been particularly hard on families, caused a major disruption in the motion picture industry ( amongst others ), and accelerated a shift in audiovisual media consumption from physical to digital. I think it's too soon to say that we're clear of it and on a straight path to normal, but overall circulation has been ticking a couple of percentage points closer to what it was each month."


Bright Spot Nominations:

From Marcia and Jennifer:

"I would like to nominate Jeff Linders for Bright Spot. Jeff very quickly acted on the safety recommendations delivered to Northside and Outreach. He created a tool to make it easier to lock and unlock our carts in the Wifi van, added high vis tape to our vehicle steps, and he replaced the safety pin on our lift that was so difficult for many of us to get in and out. He's just a super friendly co-worker that is never bothered by our requests for help."

Jennifer seconds Marcia's nomination: "Jeff has been so incredibly helpful since coming over to Northside, across the board. He did so much work to get our delivery room updated following the CVMIC visit, has been quick to get our requests done on the clipboard, and is always offering helpful solutions."

From Erin Mendoza:

"I cannot express how helpful Alejandria is on a daily basis. I have always been impressed with her professionalism and organization. While preparing for a long vacation, I asked for help from Alejandria with a couple projects. She was more than happy to lend a hand and took the time to clarify several details. Her ability to coordinate multiple projects (from various staff) with her many teen volunteers is outstanding and I am so thankful for her on our YFS team. "

From Rob:
"I would like to nominate Brent and Max for a Bright Spot. During the power outage on Monday, when the server failed they upheld the true definition of Tech Support: A person who does precision guesswork based on unreliable data. Also see: Wizard, Magician."

From Barb:

"Special thanks to Michelle for finding us such great staff candidates! We're really improving the diversity of our staff and finding terrific talent to join the KPL team!"

Have a wonderful, cooler weekend, everyone!

Barb

Bright Spots in a Dark Day

Most of you know we lost power at Northside for a few hours yesterday. What you might not know is we lost an email server during the power outage and Brent worked late last evening to rebuild it. Thanks, Brent! It's so wonderful to have someone with your skills on our team!

NS staff braved the heat inside the building like champs. Here's a Bright Spot nomination from Jennifer detailing all they did to make the best of a very dark and uncomfortable afternoon:

I'd like to submit a bright spot award to the Northside/Outreach staff for their hard work on Monday while the power was out. Everyone here really stepped up and took a dismal turn of events and turned it into a positive.

We were able to use this "analog opportunity" to engage a bit deeper with patrons, going into the stacks with them and sharing our flashlights so they could read the spines and find what they needed, greeting every patron more personally at the door and letting them know what services we could still provide, and even having extra conversation at checkout while we went through the manual processes. We also saw some innovation - Elkid made a clever lantern to light up the room in OS. Donna took the initiative to start a shifting project we hadn't been able to get to. Karen turned interactions with families into a fun "spooky" experience. Kristin and Shannon started their book club in the dark (fun ambiance for mysteries!). Shannon also kindly stayed to help after I found I needed to leave a bit early to pick up Hudson from daycare.

Everyone really stepped up together with such positive attitudes and they truly were a bright spot this week.

I've attached a photo of Elkid working by "bucket light."

Thanks,
Jennifer

Big Projects on the Horizon and Thanksgiving in September

Libraries have always referred people with social service needs to matching agencies as part of reference work. More and more, we see people who are in great need and could use more than a referral to an agency. They need an advocate. There is a movement called Whole Person Librarianship that guides libraries to a transition beyond referral to include partnerships like social worker student internships, agency office hours at the library, or library staff social workers. KPL is working with 11 other mid-sized libraries in Wisconsin on a project to model community recovery and resilience and the psychosocial needs of the community is a major focus area. Next week we'll be sending you a survey to hear your experiences with patrons in need, and understand your opinion about the library's role in responding to those needs. We'll ask you how well we're doing in our response and how we can do better. We'll ask the same questions of our frequent library users, and then we'll formulate a plan to move forward. I hope you'll participate! 

Our next big project will launch this fall when we completely redesign our online experience. No, we aren't changing catalogs, so don't worry about relearning WorkFlows, but the website will change completely, and I think you're going to be excited about the new look. We're partnering with BiblioCommons to generate all new content and refresh the user interface. Here are examples of other libraries up and running on BiblioCommons. I think you'll like what you see. The project will take 22 weeks which will give us plenty of time to get everything right. We'll form teams to build it just how we like it, so prepare to get creative! If you want to know more about the benefits of migrating to BiblioCommons, see this month's Board Packet or attend the board meeting on Tuesday August 11th at 5:30pm at NS.

Congratulations to Amy and Emily for their continued success with craft programs. The tie dye programs are especially popular. Look at the pretty products!

Let's have Thanksgiving in September!  We've been fondly remembering the days when we shared good food and friendship at work. It feels like the coming Thanksgiving may once again be under quarantine, so let's celebrate in September! KPL will provide the basics, and staff can share their culinary skills. More info to come...

I've personally noticed staff members doing wonderful work or helping another staff member in need this week and they deserve Bright Spot nominations:

Aaron for stopping by with an offer of help when he noticed I couldn't find the copier jam. Such a lovely act of kindness! Thank you!

Sandy for completely redesigning the board packet. If you think that's an easy job, I have news for you. The details are crazy!

Dan for keeping at the contractors until they get the air conditioning system right in the new activities room at SW. Thanks for being so persistent!

Jennifer for creating such magical programs at NS and Brandi for crafting a Hispanic Heritage Month slate of programs that are sure to wow us all.

Linda for compassionately supporting every department all the time.

Brent for getting his computer network security certifications.

Sue Vaal for starting a new senior book club to help the elderly combat loneliness.

Do you have stories to share about team members who are doing fantastic things and performing random acts of kindness? Share them with me and I'll add their name to the Bright Spot Hall of Fame!

Happy weekend, Everyone!

Barb