Whew! What a month!

I can’t believe it’s July already, and I really don’t know where June went, but it was quite a month.

We kicked off Summer Reading at the beginning of June, and for the first time since I’ve been here, we have an adult summer reading program. It’s Summer Reading Bingo, and you cross off a square on your bingo card by reading a book and writing a mini-review. Complete your first square and earn a bookmark, complete a bingo and earn a library desk clock. Each mini-review also earns you an entry for the end of summer raffle and you can earn up to 24 raffle entries if you do a ‘coverall’ of your bingo card. Sounds easy, right? The catch is that you might have to read something outside your normal comfort zone - like a romance novel, western, true crime or a classic. We’ve had a lot of fun plotting our reading strategies and finding books we may not normally read. The challenge of it also pulled me out of my reading slump. There’s still time if you want to play along. Pick up your bingo card today at any library location.

The next thing that kept us busy was of course, the flood. Our sump pump at the lower level entrance failed to keep up with the rainfall and the drains were partially clogged, so the area outside the entrance flooded to about three feet deep. Fortunately the glass door held most of the water back, but a lot of it made it in to soak the carpeting and drywall in the Children’s Department. It wasn’t deep enough to damage the books on the shelves, but we had to move many of them so the carpet and walls could dry as well as knock some holes in the walls. It took several days before we could get the drying equipment out of the way and everything put back together again, but we’re back and good as new.

We were lucky that we had flood insurance and I know many of our patrons didn’t. If you were flooded and you had library books that were lost or damaged as a result of it, please let us know immediately so we can submit the information to our insurance company and take them off your record. I know library books are probably the last thing on a person’s mind when all of their belongings are floating downstream and we want to help out our flooded patrons, but we won’t know unless you tell us.

The final big thing this month is the imminent completion of the new Monrovia branch library. It’s beautiful and I can’t wait for everyone to see it! The construction is mostly complete except for a few odds and ends, like a light fixture that was overlooked and delays on the circulation desk construction. Now it’s our turn to get to work - there’s phone systems to be installed, internet connections to be set up, furniture deliveries to be coordinated, interior signage, landscaping and oh yes, books! Based on our calculations, we can pack about 32,000 books in there if we stuff the place completely. We want room to grow and add new materials as time goes by, so we’ll start out with about 16,000. We plan on a grand opening in early September, so watch this space as well as the newspaper for more information.

1 comment July 15th, 2008