Tuesday, June 09, 2009

 

Teens Invade, Old Folks Too Busy!

We began the month with concerns about the flu in public spaces, dealt with another library break-in, and ended in frantic preparation for the annual summer reading events.

One of the most successful events of our year was held on the 16th – the young adult “Ana-Con II”. One hundred teens invaded the Anahuac library for the day, and as the second annual program of this type, it’s a tribute to the teens on our advisory board (S.T.A.B.) who put in hours of effort, along with the staff, to make it a success. It’s also rather nice to know that teens would rather visit the library than do some other traditional adolescent activities.

Our May schedule focused on “Older Americans Month,” but evidently local seniors are much too busy to attend many library events! Still, as with all library programs, you come up with ideas, promote them, and wait to see what happens. Some things are more successful than others, and those are the ones you repeat. It’s always a learning process. Our “senior” programs this month included classic tv programs, rhythmic movement exercise, finance questions and answers, and “bring your grandchild to story time.”

We also had a genealogy program to promote our new online search database, and the audience for that event was extremely excited and appreciative. One of the attendees was with the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, and the local chapter utilized the program materials we had for their meeting at the end of the month. We noticed the increase in usage of the Ancestry.com database as a result this month, so the program was successful on several levels.

Children’s story hours went on hiatus this month, while we printed, collated, and distributed over 3500 flyers to the schools about our scheduled events for June and July. We do a huge percentage of our system’s annual circulation during this period, as the children pour in to our programs and pick up reading materials to fill their summer hours. Our corporate sponsors have increased greatly this year (and in this economy, that’s a big thrill!) so we are having some truly exciting events at each library. We have snakes, cryogenics, waterslides, paintball art, ice cream cone building contests, tie dye, movies, and Twister, among other scheduled programs. It should be a fun summer, if the staff manages to survive it all.

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