Opening Day Moved to July

Color, Color Everywhere! The kids library is really taking shape. Next week we'll have leaves on the column trees and glassed in activity and art rooms. Thanks to Aaron for these great pics.

We had eyeballed June 8th as a grand opening day, but our architect has provided sage advice, warning us that simple things like missing parts in boxes might set us back a couple of weeks and leave us unprepared for that date.  So we're giving ourselves a little more time. Our new opening day for the children's library has been pushed back a month to Saturday, July 13th.

You will see ads go out soon for new staffing. All YFS staff at KPL and CL will be attending Playmaker University  through a grant from DPI. This training is designed for early childhood educators of children experiencing trauma and focuses on creating joyful spaces as an antidote to the stresses children in poverty and unsafe households experience. Our YFS staff are some of the kindest people on earth. We want to give them all the tools to nurture every child walking through our doors.

Our fundraising has us over the $1.7 million mark on our way to $3 million. Thanks to BMO Bank for their $25,000 gift that purchases naming rights for the community partner meeting space. WE Energies has purchased the toy collection with their $50,000 gift. The Andrea family has claimed the magnet wall with their $75,000 gift. Do you know any area businesses that can help? Please tell them about our fabulous project and how this children's library is going to give kids a great head start and move our literacy scores higher.

This week's Bright Spots are all from me:

Gina deserves a bright spot every week, but this week in particular for juggling a lot of people all at once at the SW service desk this week with grace and expertise. She loves that doorbell! Thanks to all the staff who answer!

I also want to give Jason some kudos for always stepping in to take charge in Dan's absence. Thanks for all you do!

You've probably noticed that Marcia is really good at writing grant applications. Well, she's done it again! Here's the official notice: "On behalf of the Kenosha Community Foundation, congratulations on the $1,000 CBK Small Grant awarded to the Kenosha Public Library and ArtSpace for your efforts to build a community OFRENDA and offer multi-generation programs at Northside Library to recognize Día de Los Muertos."  Way to go, Marcia! Thanks for all the good work you are doing!

And thanks to Jessica for coming over Thursday morning to see the new kids space under construction. Jessica immediately took some video to create another fun post on Instagram. If you haven't looked at our Instagram feed lately, you are missing awesome entertainment. You are among some of the best actors and dancers in the library world. Give them a like!  instagram.com/mykpl 

I'll be taking a few days off next week to spend time with the grandkids. I'll be available by phone, if needed. Enjoy the snow!

Sharing Our Good Work and lots of Bright Spots

Congratulations to lots of staff members who are sharing Kenosha's great ideas and projects with the library community at-large! Here are a few mentions from the YFS team that Heather included in her March board report:

"Congratulations to Youth Librarians Amy Rae Weaver, Jessica Hodges, and Megan Nigh who recently had presentation proposals accepted for the Wisconsin Association for Public Libraries (WAPL) Conference in May! Megan Nigh will also be presenting at the ALA Annual Conference in San Diego, CA in June. Early Literacy Specialist Shawn Wolf will be presenting at UW-Whitewater’s Early Childhood Education Conference in April. Youth Librarians Tessa Fox-Pawlaczyk and Heather Thompson will be presenting at the Public Library Association’s Virtual Conference in April. Teen Services Specialist Elliott Walcroft received a scholarship to attend the Public Library Association Conference in person in Columbus, OH. We are so proud of our team!"

Shannon will be presenting at the October "Back in Circulation" conference in Madison on how we've rearranged our collections for better use. Here's her program description.

"Over the past decade, Kenosha Public Library envisioned space renovation and improved collection development. Despite facing the challenges of the pandemic, civil unrest, and the loss of our administration office building in 2020, we persevered, earning recognition as the Wisconsin Library Association’s Library of the Year in 2020 and an IMLS National Medal Finalist in 2021. In 2022, an unexpected opportunity allowed us to launch a design plan that propelled us three years ahead of our strategic plan, integrating innovative collection development goals. We genrefied our fiction collection, started the transition away from the Dewey Decimal System in non-fiction, and established a hybrid Pop Asia collection. Join us to dive into the details of our transformation, discover our process for deciding difficult taxonomy, explore the methods used for reshaping our collections, and learn about the significant outcomes observed a year later."

It's so great to see our staff sharing our successes (and failures, too!) with library staff across the country. We've made a huge effort to test new ways to engage the public with the value of their libraries and information sharing like this helps all libraries everywhere.

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This week's Bright Spot nominations:

From Shannon: "Last week I was helping a patron who told me, several times, "those tall fellas at the desk are really great." Those tall fellas, Alex and DJ, have also gotten several compliments from staff who close with them on Tuesday nights. Thank you both for your stand-out performance with patrons and staff, it is deeply appreciated."

From Hillary S:
"I would like to recognize Dan Sommerfeld for Bright Spot Recognition. Dan works as one of our OPE Bookmobile drivers and balances OPE school and community stops. Dan is hardworking, reliable and punctual. Dan is always smiling and quick to offer a passing hello. Dan goes above and beyond by taking initiative to do tasks that are much needed, but often fall by the wayside; such as tackling the missing list and cleaning, vacuuming and washing the Bookmobile and Book Truck. I really appreciate Dan's help on Fridays during our busy stop at St. Joseph. While I am often tied up with checking out students' books, Dan can be found milling around groups of students. Dan fields questions, locates materials, makes reading recommendations and places a number of items on hold. Dan makes sure we always have enough Dogman and Taylor Swift books to go around! We appreciate you, Dan! "

Have a great week, everyone!

Reading Recommendations in Biblio

BiblioCommons has started to enable reading recommendations in the catalog. LibraryThing powers these recommendations and will appear in 3 areas: 

While You Wait
This new feature will appear under a title if recommendations are found for a title and they are available in the catalog. An example can be found under Chaos Kings.

You May Also Like
This section can be found on the page for the item and will provide a list of reading recommendations for the title. An example can be found on Missing Persons. 

My Library Dashboard
For patrons that have enabled checkout history, a section will appear under the "Available Now from My For Later Shelf" that will provide a recommendation based on a recently completed title. It will look like this.

New Kids Library Pics and Bright Spots

 New pics from the Kids Library! Every time we visit there's so much progress! Grand opening June 8th! Right around the corner!

Is it just your imagination or is the library really busy these days?

It's not your imagination.  Visits and circulation are way up. 2024 is starting out strong with a 16% increase in visitors and 8% increase in circulation! Digital collection use is also increasing, as is use of our public computers and wireless services. Program attendance is up 14%, which is quite significant after a record breaking 2023. Even our subscription database sessions, a service that has lost popularity over the years, went up 29% in February. Wow! Thanks to everyone who is working so hard. The community likes what you're doing!

Bright Spots this week:

From Karen:
"Thank you Alex for all your help last week with printing and copying. You are awesome!!
Thank you Elliott for taking time out of your day to create a pencil topper pattern in Canva for the Kung Fu Panda program. The pattern can be used for future programs. Yeah, Elliott!! "

From DJ:

"I'd like to give Alex S a bright spot. 

While Gina was out I was working on ILLs and ended up dropping a 4 compartment CD case (not that I don't handle ILLs with care, I'm just a little clumsy sometimes--that part is for Gina in case she is reading). I thought this rare--some might even say exotic--CD case was broken and unfixable. Alex immediately ran to the back with his cape billowing behind him and found a backup of the exact case and pieced everything together, keeping all the owning library's tags and markings in place! 

The superhero allusion might have been slightly dramatic, but I'm very grateful to have helpful coworkers like Alex. Thank you Alex!"

Social Work Student Placement and Lots of Bright Spots

I have great news to share-

We will have a student placement from Carthage College's Social Work program at our branches starting this fall! Jackie, our student,  is particularly interested in working with teens, so this will be a big support to our teen library staff and I think it will go a long way in helping some of our teens with challenging home lives. 

Kahlil is finishing up a grant application to AARP that would get us some new furniture and computers and support a transition to senior services at the original Uptown Neighborhood Library.

The Shalom Center opened another building, The Hope Hub, at its 39th Ave site that will expand its services even further. We now have an additional daytime warming and cooling center in the community!

This week we have many Bright Spot awards:

From Michaela:
"I'd like to nominate Joe and Krista for a Bright Spot. Joe or "Professor Maple" was a big hit with both the kids and adults and oversaw our first ever, adult-only TCG Pokemon Battle! Krista, our newest addition to the OPE team jumped in without hesitation to help with the set up and running of various activities throughout the day and was a button making champ alongside Lisa in the YFS department. I also want to give a special thanks to everyone who helped out leading up to the event, there was A LOT of prep work involved, the YFS & OPE team spent hours prepping supplies and we can't thank you enough! Lastly, I just want to say that this was my first time working the annual Pokemon Day event and I must admit that I was full of pride seeing my co-workers surrounded by so many enthusiastic Pokemon lovers yet remaining unflappable despite the tornado warning, Jennifer's absence, limited staff, and short turn around times to tear down and set up for each event. Your enthusiasm and hard work was noticed and greatly appreciated! "

From Barb:
Special thanks to Jason for his quick and brilliant response to the new book return snags.  They work like a charm now. We really appreciate you! 

Thanks, as well, to everyone who is pitching in to keep things running smoothly while Jennifer and Kimmy are away.

Happy weekend, everyone!