Programming – Sandy Library

August 1st was the monthly Library Coffee House as part of Main Street’s First Friday.  We hosted singer/songwriter Caroline Hecht to the great enjoyment of approximately 150 visitors.

Summer Reading – Sandy and Hoodland Libraries

August 17th  was the last day to turn in reading log from the Summer Reading Program.  Here are our final program statistics:

Sandy Library
Signups: 581
Finishers: 103

Hoodland Library 
Signups: 79
Finishers: 12

And for the Teen programs:
Sandy Library  Signups: 186    Finishers: 41

Hoodland Library  Signups: 17   HO Finishers: 4

The grand prizes for the kids and teens raffle were iPad Minis. We also gave away Lego kits, book sets, t-shirts, and “Robot Arm” toys. Each child who finished received a new paperback book. 

A photo of our Kid’s Grand Prize Winner with their new iPad Mini!

 Community Involvement

On August 4th, Library Director Sarah McIntyre attended the Hoodland Women’s Club luncheon meeting to give a quick update on the future move of the Hoodland Library.  Sarah will speak to the group in January to gather input on the building process.

Staff Training and Planning

On August 13th seven staff members met to discuss programming at the library and create a framework for the coming year.  Many of the libraries upcoming programs can be found on pages 20-21 of the City of Sandy Recreation Guide.  Stay tuned for additional programs!

On August 20th and 27th Staff training was offered by Librarians Maureen Skinner and Monica Smith to prepare for combining the Reference Desk and the Kid’s Service Desk.  Staff learned how to answer Reference questions, and how to troubleshoot the public computers.  On Sunday August 31st staff and the Friends of the Library worked together to remove the large desk at the entrance to the Kids’ Room, and created a smaller approachable desk in the same spot.   There has been a great deal of positive feedback on the more visible and accessible aspects to the new layout.

City-wide Events

Seven library employees helped set up and serve at the Volunteer Picnic, thanking our wonderful volunteers that do so very much for us.

 Marketing

Sandy Library – In August the theme of our adult display was Let’s Get Cooking. This was to acknowledge the harvest/canning season. There were a total of 9 items checked out.

Hoodland Library – We have an Oregon Battle Of the Book (OBOB) display!

Staffing

July 1 marked the official start of the new Sandy and Hoodland Public Library Director.  Each staff member met with the Director to give input and share information about the library.  A management team was created, and planning has begun to reorganize and create efficiencies so that staff can work on creating a dynamic program plan for the coming year.

Programs

Two out of our four book clubs took a summer hiatus. The women’s book club will start up again in September and the Evening Mystery club will reconvene in October.

On July 3 & 8, Alton Chung brought stories and tales to life at the Sandy and Hoodland Libraries.  Families enjoyed hearing traditional native american tales, as well as, coming of age stories from Chung’s own childhood.

 July 15 & 17  Mad Science at Hoodland and Sandy Libraries.  Crazy experiments presented by Molly Molecule.

July 16 Teen Program – All about Henna Tattooing.  Popular and fun.  Teens learned about henna tattoos and tattooed themselves and each other.

July 22 & 24 Red Yarn Hoodland and Sandy Libraries.  Great interactive stories, games, and dancing about how to be a Naturalist.

July 29 Dragon Theater at Hoodland

July 1 & 31 We started and ended the month with Bricks for Kidz LEGO program.  Families at Hoodland and Sandy Library had lots of fun! Though attendance was limited by those the presenter, those who did attend loved it. The success of the event has inspired the start of a (soon to be announced) LEGO club at the library.

Summer Reading sign-up  numbers:  Sandy: 581 kids, 186 teens. Hoodland: 79 Kids, 17 Teens

Marketing

Twenty-one books were checked out from the July “SUMMER FUN” adult book display.

We solicited community involvement in the process of choosing books, gathering pieces, and setting up a display featuring our great arts and crafts books with projects completed from them.  There are some beautiful projects, and it’s our best display yet!  Come in and see it in August.

Library Board Meeting

The Library Advisory Board met on June 16th.  The Board had lots of energy and ideas, and is looking forward to participating in a Strategic Planning process for the Sandy and Hoodland Libraries.

Summer Reading

• We signed up 531 kids for Summer Reading at Sandy and 63 at Hoodland
• We signed up 137 Teens for Summer Reading at Sandy and 17 at Hoodland

Programs at the Sandy Library

• June 19th was Greta Pedersen’s Science Of Sound Program. Greta sang and showed the kids the science behind sound. 56 kids and 25 adults attended.

• On June 26th the Dragon Theater Puppets presented the show “You’re Electric”.  50 kids and 25 adults attended.

Programs at the Hoodland Library:

At Hoodland Library Greta Pedersen did her “Science of Sound” show on June 17th. 10 kids and 10 adults attended.

New Library Director

New Library Director, Sarah McIntyre, worked closely with Beth during the first week of June to allow for a smooth transition for this big change.  Sarah, staff, and volunteer Alberta are pictured below.

The Library Coffee House event on May 2nd was a big success. Aaron Meyer and his violin really rocked the house! He shared the stage with three of his students, all violin proteges. In this way he showed his humble character to the audience. It was a very entertaining evening. We’re lucky that we’ll be able to see him again this summer with Music in the Park.

Interviews for my job (Library Director) were held on May 7. We chose 5 excellent candidates from  25 applicants. Three of the interviews were “live” and the other two were on skype, since the interviewees lived in Michigan and New York. All of the interviews went well, and all of the members of the interview panel (Nancy Enabnit, Lisa Young, Chris Wilhelmi, Seth and myself) agreed on our top choice– Sarah McIntyre. Sarah was last employed at West Linn Public Library, and comes to us very well trained in Workflows and Symphony, our Integrated Library systems. Sarah will start as Director on Tuesday, July 1.

In conjunction with many libraries in Oregon, we presented an “Oregon Reads” program, honoring the centennial of William Stafford. Stevan Allred (from Estacada) emceed a Film viewing of the documentary Every War has Two Losers. He also read aloud Stafford’s recently published The Osage Orange Tree. As he read, we projected woodcut images from the book. Stevan then lead a discussion about Stafford’s poetry and his pacifism. This program was sponsored by the Friends of Sandy Library.

Woodcut images by Dennis Cunningham from The Osage Orange Tree 

Last Month I reported on our plans to move the Hoodland Library to another location. The Hoodland Women’s Club have decided not to build the community center that they’ve been planning and Mercury Development is holding us to the statement in the lease that says we can cancel our lease to move into the community center. Therefore, we can’t move out of the Hoodland Shopping Center until the lease expires in June 2015. Seth, Sarah and I have discussed plans to move in a year, and are looking at options to make the move a reality in 2015. It will enhance library services in the Hoodland area, and cost less than what we are currently paying.

April 13 -19 was National Library Appreciation Week, and April is also National Poetry Month. We honored both by having our 2nd annual Poetry Slam on April 17th. The picture below shows winners Jesse Gardner (left) and Frank George IV (right) with guest host Scott Poole (center). It was a great evening. There were about 40 people present to listen to readings of great poetry, enjoy excellent refreshments, and laugh at the many hilarious moments. This year we offered a performance workshop on April 12. This allowed individuals the chance to practice their poetry performance and to get feedback from other performers.

Maureen Skinner and Ashley Kritzeck attended the Oregon Library Association conference in Salem on April 17. They tried to enroll in a book repair class at the conference, but it is so popular, they couldn’t get in. Maybe next time….

We were informed that the Hoodland Women’s Club are cancelling their plans to build a community center in the Welches area. We were planning to rent space there for the Hoodland Library. Margaret and Bob Thurman, owners of Welches Mountain Properties, showed me a vacant site in one of their buildings that would make a good library. Chris, Seth, Joe Knapp and I visited and discussed the possibility of moving the library. With the capital grant that we will receive from Clackamas County (as part of the library district formation) we should be able to renovate the site, add fiber and other enhancements that will result in great improvements to library services in the community. A picture of the building is posted below.

On March 7th we celebrated the library’s 80th anniversary with a “First Friday-type” party. In fact if was the first Friday of March, and with other things going on in town, it was as if we just couldn’t wait until the official First Friday opening in April!

The Rose City Hot Club (left) played depression-era jazz and we had about 100 guests present to hear our speakers, enjoy snacks and music. The Friends of Sandy Library sponsored the program and even supplied the door prize: a two night stay at the Sylvia Beach Hotel. A great time was had by all.

We honored Sara Rees, one of the long-time members of the Sandy Women’s Club. The club created the library in 1934, in a basement of a building that would flood from time to time. The club celebrated their 100th anniversary last year. The picture shows Sara getting a festive crown designed by Olive Rootbeer, clown and balloon artist extraordinaire.

Olive returned to help us with our annual recognition of Dr. Seuss on Saturday, March 8. There were stories, songs, treats and balloons!

Forest Ries, Library Technician, left us to move to New York. We will miss him very much. We promoted August George to the position of Technician and we hired two new shelvers, Breanna Cohen and Riley Blake. Ashley Kritzeck was promoted to Library Assistant and the Library Director job announcement has been posted to the national American Library Association website, as well as local websites.

Monica presented a “Tattoo a Banana” program for teens this month and also attended a meeting to learn about Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library program.

I enjoy talking to folks about how libraries’ missions have evolved. Libraries today are more like community centers, offering classes and programs, in addition to the typical collections of books, magazines and computers. In February, we had two special programs: Technology Tools Tutoring class, and a family film: The Princess Bride.

We track statistics to determine how well we are serving the community. Each month the Community Room and our Study Room are used approximately 60 times. On average our computers are used by 66 people per day in Sandy and 17 per day in Hoodland. I believe that tracking attendance is probably the best measure of success that we have. We installed a door counter, which we’ve had problems with, but the important thing is that I was able to determine that on average, 400 people enter the library each day.

These statistics are helpful to track as indicators of how relevant we are in the community. We also count circulation, and it is interesting to note which materials count the most to our circulation. See the graph below.

 It is clear to see that DVDs have the highest percentage of the circulation. But it must be remembered that they also have the shortest check out period (7 days, as opposed to 28 days for most books), which explains part of that higher circulation.

Directors from the Clackamas County libraries met in Sandy on January 10th for a day-long retreat. We are united in our missions to provide information services and library materials in our communities, and have common issues and concerns with the database we share. It is a lively group and we do enjoy getting together.

On the first Tuesday of the month we offered a Technology Tools class to assist participants in learning to use their electronic devices. Over the last few months we have helped folks with Kindles, Nooks, laptops, printers, phones, notebooks, and general internet searching.

On January 16 Monica offered a Henna tattoo program. The teens had a lot of fun making beautiful “tattoos” on themselves and each other.

On January 22, a group met in the community room to view the movie Numen: the healing power of plants. The host partnered with Organic Sandy and there were about 20 people present. Our community room was a great venue for this successful program.

The family movie on January 25 was City of Ember.

The library offered another Technology Tutoring class on December 3. We had a small group of participants. There is always something new to learn and we are happy that word is spreading that we can help those with questions.

A wonderful mixed media art show was installed the first week in December, and will be in place through March. The artist, Nina Bradford, is from the Spiral Gallery in Estacada.

Monica presented two fun programs. A Teddy Bear Tea was held on Dec. 7. Children brought their teddy bears in for story time and a tea party. The bears stayed overnight at the library and the children picked them up the next day and were able to see pictures of what their bears were up to in the night; climbing trees and riding on the book cart.

A family movie was shown on December 28: Home Alone, a real holiday classic.

The Library board met on Dec. 18. I provided a light supper for them to thank them for their generous contribution to our community.

Library programs concentrated on Food Awareness in November. We offered two free programs: “We Are What We Eat” a conversation project program from Oregon Humanities, and we offered a film, “Nourish : Food + Community”. These programs called attention to the strong bonds that are formed around food, and about how our food choices can affect our health and our environment.

Another aspect of our Food Awareness Week was to consider those folks who live with food insecurity and are not able to make choices about their food. Donations of cash and food were collected for the Community Action Center food bank in Sandy and Neighborhood Missions in the Hoodland area. One half of all overdue fines collected during the week of 11/17 – 11/23 was donated as well.  In total we collected $452.13 for the Action Center, $91.35 for Neighborhood Missions in Welches and also a lot of food!

On the first Tuesday we welcomed people to come and learn about their technology tools with the help of librarians. Maureen Skinner has also been working with some residents at Avamere, assisting them with their technology questions.

A “people counter” was installed at the front door of the library. An estimated 425 people come into the library each day, and there are approximately 70 computer logins per day. These statistics measure the community’s library use better than mere circulation counts.