Department heads met yesterday morning to discuss further stages of reopening as we look forward to a tapering off of the Covid-19 threat over the next several months.
Patrons
Before I get into that, I’d like to address the likelihood that more of our callers and visitors will push back on or ignore our Covid-19 rules as more of them get vaccinated or just get fed up with so many months of restrictions. We’ve gotten a handful of phone calls recently, for example, from patrons questioning why our study rooms, play areas, and other parts of the library are still closed. Ultimately, the decision on when to reopen these things will be made by myself and the library board. I don’t expect staff to debate patrons on whether what we’re doing is beneficial or logical. Please know that you can always refer hard patrons to myself or Molly. With certain patrons, trying to argue that our restrictions are based on continued advice from the CDC and other institutions to, for example, maintain social distancing and continue mask wearing creates an opportunity for them to express their contrary views and to start a debate. I took a call from a dad yesterday morning who was upset that his daughter couldn’t meet with her tutor in a study room. I explained what services we were offering right now, that we have a plan in place to reopen study rooms when we feel it’s safe, and that we are just as excited to get back to some normalcy as everyone else is. When he persisted and began repeating his arguments against our rules, I told him that I had heard what he had to say and will take it into account but that I wasn’t going to debate him. That may not always work but it seemed to shut down his persistence and the conversation ended amicably.
As always, we should also be prepared for library visitors to ignore our rules—rules about hanging out and reading, for example, or keeping a mask on. Given the limited number of patrons in the building right now, these are not rules I expect staff to rigidly enforce. We’ll do what we can to communicate our expectations but no one should feel compelled to engage in a verbal tussle with a patron over a relatively minor infraction, particularly if it’s clear that the patron is knowingly violating our rules and is unlikely to comply. I’ve put one lounge chair near the magazines and newspapers to give patrons a spot to sit during their 30-minute visit. If you have other ideas that could help us accommodate patrons that our rules aren’t working for, please let me know.
Reopening
Those of you around JPL last spring know that, given a lack of guidance and the unpredictable nature of the pandemic, decisions on when to close, when to reopen, and what services to offer often came with only a few weeks’ notice. My hope is that the next phases of our reopening, where we start getting back to normal operating hours and services, will be a little more predictable but I don’t think that’s something we can count on.
Starting Monday, hold notices will invite patrons to come into the library to pick up their holds. The notice text will read:
The following items are being held for you at the Johnston Public Library. Your holds can be picked up in the library any time we’re open (Mon-Thu: 10am-6pm, Fri-Sat: 10am – 5:30pm, Sun: Closed) or you can follow the link below to make an appointment to pick them up via the library’s curbside service. If you’ve already made an appointment for a future date, don’t make a new appointment. We’ll bundle your new holds with the others.
In discussions, at JPL and in the public library community at large, about what library services look like post-Covid, a common topic is the likelihood that some form of curbside pickup is here to stay. How popular curbside will be as the pandemic comes to an end, however, is hard to say. Seeing how many patrons take us up on the offer of coming inside to pick up their holds instead of picking them up curbside will give us a sense of how we need to staff curbside going forward.
In May, the plan is to reopen normal hours on Sundays, 1pm to 5pm and to continue our current appointment-based services—browsing, computer use, and curbside pickup. In June, study rooms will reopen and we’ll stop asking patrons to make appointments to browse or use a computer. Curbside pickup will move from an appointment-based service to an on-demand service available any time we’re open. Holds will be shelved on the self-serve pickup shelves. Patrons who want to pick up their holds curbside will call the curbside number then a staff member will checkout the patron’s holds and take them outside. Sometime in July or August, we’ll likely resume normal hours, open the Archive Room for public meetings, and startup some of our smaller in-person programs. When Johnston’s schools start up on August 23rd, we’ll start admitting patrons under 14 back into the library without an adult per our Unattended Child Policy.
After nearly a year of operating with limited hours and services and few patrons in the building, it’s going to be tough on all of us to transition JPL back to the kind of bustling library it was until last spring. We’ll need to re-acclimate to the sometimes-stressful encounters that come with being a place open to anyone. What will make all of this easier, I hope, is seeing the faces that we know and feeling how grateful our patrons are for what we do for them. Helping people is what we’re good at here and what makes this job special. Getting back to more of that is what we have to look forward to.
There are more details included in the reopening document linked below. Let me or another supervisor know if you have questions or ideas.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b7HQGm50bguUt3M6MeMeg0oHMdLKJUz8tIAqvzFGeoc/edit?usp=sharing