Royal Reader Coming

 

7-26-2024

Next month is Grandparent’s Month for Bedtime Storytime. Mrs. Jill Douglas has agreed to come out of retirement for the first time and kick it off on Tuesday, August 6^th at 6:30. There is plenty of time to forget, but I wanted to give patrons the opportunity to put the date on calendars across East Troy and beyond. We bill Bedtime Storytime as being for all ages AND including a snack, so former students of all ages are welcome to take a stroll down memory lane. Perhaps I’ll find her a crown to wear as Royal Readers did in her classroom.

In the meanwhile, we are gearing up for the Pizza Party on Monday, July 29^th. Tickets must be in the boxes ready for the drawing before we close Saturday, July 27^th. All prizes and boxes will be moved to the lower level and prepared for the drawing before we open on Monday.

As summer winds down, we are turning our attention to fall/winter programming. Miss Maria intends to continue holding a children’s book club that will meet monthly. I have a few irons in the fire for adults. Plans need to be finalized by the end of the month in order to make the Park & Req Fall Guide. This summer we created a calendar that overviewed June, July and August programming. It was so convenient when promoting programs to patrons, that we wrote creating them quarterly into the Strategic Plan. Doing so also forces us (read me) to be more organized in scheduling programs. We’ll have copies available in the library and on our website as well.

Last week the Friday, the Friends of ETLPL held a general meeting. It was their first time sitting in the new furniture they bought for the Lower Level. The new furniture includes two sofas and two chairs. In addition, I found couch tables – C shaped tables that slip under furniture so the table top is right next to the sitter – at Aldi’s and purchased three.  All of it was a hit. In the two weeks the furniture, tables and rug were in place, the library hosted four events that overflowed onto the original sofa that hasn’t been removed yet. Given the obvious need for additional seating, they went ahead and approved the purchase of two more chairs for that area. Thank you Friends.

The focus of the meeting was actually planning for the fall play fundraiser directed by Mary Nugent. More details will follow in a later article, but for now mark your calendars for one or all of the following dates: October 11, 12, 13 and October 18, 19, 20.

Keeping It Alive (No Green Thumb Here) & Pizza Party

 

7-19-2024

It’s Monday. Lisa has been on vacation for the past ten days. She comes back to work tomorrow and I’m afraid she’ll walk in the door take one look at our primula and leave. Brandy tells me it’s a German primrose. She knows this from researching how to bring it back to life. Yes, I may have killed it.

“Why is this such a big deal?” you may ask. That’s an excellent question since many of you may be like me and kill just about any plant that enters the house. In a word, Nancy. The plant was gifted to the library by a patron to show her gratitude and appreciation for the library. Nancy was our green thumb and in charge of caring for it. Since she passed, I’ve been the point person on that. Lisa has mentioned the importance of keeping it alive and the guilt she/we will feel in the event of its demise. Send me all your positive energy/thoughts/prayers. I have no memory of the last time I watered it, which accounts for the sever dropping we’ve seen all day.

On the bright side, I have kept the pot of geraniums outside alive and thriving. Of course, the rains probably helped and our Board Trustee who waters when I can’t. Apparently, it takes a Village (and an ecosystem) to raise a plant as well as a child. The geraniums are important as they were planted in Nancy’s honor. Every summer she used to line her porch pots containing over 80 plants.

My next large feat is the Summer Reading Pizza Party. I’ve already fumbled the ball on collecting RSVPs. Anyone who participated in the SRP is invited to have Genoa’s cheese pizza and watch the prize drawing on Monday, July 29^th.  All reading grids must be returned to the library no later than Saturday, July 27^th at 1:00 pm. Included in that deadline is placing tickets for the drawings in the appropriate boxes. In order to prepare for the party, all the prizes and drawing boxes will be taken down to Nancy’s Nook. The boxes won’t be accessible for additional entries.

This year we’ve been handing out coupons from Kwik Trip’s  Kwik Books program to children who return their reading grids. The coupon is good for one free item – either a garden salad or pizza slice. Sorry adults, all our coupon sponsors, Kwik Trip, Springs Water Park, Wisconsin State Fair, and Tanis Construction’s Walworth County Fair tickets, are geared toward children reading. We have to do it primarily for the love. However, the prizes sponsored by our Friends have no age limit.

Reading Now: There, There by Tommy Orange, Solitaire by Alice Oseman

Listening to Now: The Dying Light by Joy Ellis ( DCI Matt Ballard Bk 3)

Strategic Plan - Goal 1

 

7-12-2024

This week marks the end of the Strategic Plan writing process. Thank you to Molly McCormack Moody and Lloyd Sineni for joining Lisa Gitz and I for many, many meetings beginning in November. As a committee we focused on responses to the Community Survey from February and created three goals. Today I’ll focus on the first one.

Goal 1 reads, “Expand communication with area residents and organizations in order to strengthen relationships and promote library service.” Essentially that translates into finding effective ways to communicate what is happening at the library. In April I wrote an article that detailed the survey responses regarding how people learn about library programs. There was a decided split between social media for nonusers and library signage and the newspaper for user.

Many of the real actions laid out for this goal are ways to diversify delivery with a minimum of effort. Meaning, add an Instagram account which can be managed from the same interface used for our Facebook posts. Same amount of work as long as images are created to fit Instagram. Continue to make newspaper articles available through the library’s website only do so through a blog that can be shared on Facebook. The advantage of that is the ability for readers to easily go back to earlier articles they may have missed or wish to reference for some reason. I actually did just that to identify when a previous article referenced social media and the Community Survey. For accountability purposes, it is easy to see the number of views for each article through the blog and watch them go up from week to week.

There are two other delivery platforms identified in the goal: the website and a community calendar.

Shortly after we launched our redesigned website, the Department of Justice/Office of Civil Rights released a ruling regarding accessibility requirements pertaining to government related websites. Our switch to a focus on graphics means we are in trouble on that score. The images contain the necessary information about our programming. However, they can’t be read by screen readers. Reaching compliance won’t require another redesign, but it will mean learning our way around alt text and finding a balance between that and less reliance on graphics.

The community calendar idea was born from meetings Molly McCormack Moody has attended in the past and scheduling conflicts the library has had with other community organizations. We would love for East Troy community to have a one-stop place to go to find dates and times of community events. The Chamber sends out regular emails in the summer, but the content is limited to events sponsored by the Chamber or its members. The Family Resource Center has a website. The ETLPL has a website. The East Troy Intergenerational Community Center has a website. I would love for the Lions to have a website.

The library would like to create a simple Google calendar with events for all of these organizations along with others I haven’t named. We can all make it available on our websites. That sounds like a summer programming is over project to me. If you or someone you know works with a community organization and is interested in learning more, reach out to me at the library. Those are the people we’ll start with in the fall.

Reading Now: There, There by Tommy Orange, Twilight Territory by Andrew X Pham ( Big Library Read on Libby)

Listening to Now: Hidden on the Fens by Joy Ellis (Back to DI Nikki Galena Bk 11)

Children's July 4th Parade on the 1st

 

7-5-2024

Our first Children’s Parade was a resounding success. The weather was lovely with the sun shining but the temperatures in the low 70s, we had about 65 participants. Everyone gathered outside the library at 1:30 to decorate bikes, scooters, wagons, or strollers. We had red, white, and blue streamers and garland staff had pre-cut, pin wheels we assembled, and tattoos for the adventurous. I was deemed brave for applying one to my face. With the parade before the actual holiday, it just allowed me to continue the celebration.

Police Chief Jeremy Swendrowski led the parade on his scooter. He even carried a pin wheel. The fire department made an early appearance, they thought the parade was at 1:00. Unfortunately, they never made it back for the real parade time. Our thoughts are with whoever needed them more. Thank you to both departments for being part of the day, Trustee Santa Consiglio and her guests from Albuquerque who wanted to see a small-town July 4^th and ended up handing out water and fruit snacks at parade’s end, and Miss Maria for the idea.

The Lower Level’s facelift was completed the same day with the addition of a blue and yellow, southwestern rug for the adult programming side of the space. I took a chance in running to Home Depot to pick it up along with the really long hose that will make watering both flower beds easier. There is always a lot of extra set up after holiday weekends (four trips to empty the book drop) and some cleanup from the festivities (left over wrappers and other garbage from the parade and fireworks). This year was a breeze as Ryan Holle’s FFA students were picking up trash when I arrived. They did a great job.

The hose is all set up and ready to make lift easier. Every year following their plant sale, Holle’s landscaping classes plant the flower beds at the corner of West and Graydon for the library and Playmore Park. This year the addition of our new landscaping in Nancy’s honor has added quite a bit more watering until those plants are established. That area has added such beauty to our space, that we are being very vigilant in maintaining it.

We need to thank Paul from Benchmark again for his work and that of his crew. I wrote in an earlier article that he donated the paving stones and labor. Now that the time has come to settle up, he waved off the cost of materials as well and donated his company’s work on the entire project. Paul tells me they do a couple projects for the community each year and this was a fun one and while he didn’t know Miss Nancy, he could see that the community cared for her.

Now I can find another project on which to spend those funds. Stay tuned.

Reading Now: People You Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry, There, There by Tommy Orange

Listening to Now: Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown (Book Club meets next week)