The Chestermere Public Library is working to ensure patrons can utilize everything the library has to offer, despite the doors being locked to the public due to COVID-19 restrictions.
“We’re doing our best to engage with residents to make sure we have something to offer, and we’re always open to ideas,” said the Director of Service Delivery, Cathy Burness.
The Chestermere Public Library continued with the Spring Reading Program this year, with over 200 patrons registered.
“It was much better than we did last spring, it was the very beginning of COVID, and we had to switch to online very quickly. This year, we had a lot more experience under our belts with how to do a virtual reading program,” Burness said.
The library began the Spring Reading Program open but quickly had to close due to COVID-19 additional measures.
To ensure Spring Reading Program participants could enter for the gift basket prizes, Chestermere Public Library staff placed the gift baskets in the library window.
“We were already planning on doing a lot of virtual programming, unfortunately, some of those things couldn’t happen because we weren’t on-site to do some of the videos,” Burness said.
She added, “We have had a lot of luck with the craft kits, people love them. It seems to me we’ve figured out what people want, and people want something that has a takeaway or something to physically do.”
Chestermere Public Library staff are continuing virtual story times, posting on social media, and figuring out ways to facilitate online events such as Belle’s Tea.
“We’re trying to be nimble enough to figure out how we can do that, and it still be enjoyable,” Burness said.
Chestermere Public Library members can also utilize online eResources, such as Cypress Resume, a resume writing program, TumbleBook Library for animated talking picture books, PressReader to read achieved newspapers from around the world, consumer reports, Hoopla to watch movies and TV programs, LinkedIn Learning to complete courses, and Solaro for homework help and key study guides.
Although the Chestermere Public Library staff have had to overcome many challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the library continues to receive a lot of positive feedback from library members on social media.
“We get a lot of love on social media, we do have people that joined the reading programs in order to motivate their children to read, and we hear from them on a fairly regular basis. We can’t complain, we get a lot of love,” Burness said.
“Our front-line staff are pretty amazing. We have a lot of people thanking us for what we do. Our staff are really working hard to make sure they can accommodate the requests of people who don’t know how to place holds, or don’t know what they are looking for,” she said.
The Chestermere Public Library is still able to do curbside pick-up for library members and are taking appointments and walk-ups.
“When they closed us this time, there was no mention of if we could do curbside, so the executive director decided to wait until she heard from the province if we could actually do curbside,” Burness said.
“The ladies we have on-staff don’t want anyone to have to wait, and they are doing their best to get stuff out right away. They want to help everybody, and they really do aim to please,” she said.
Adding, “We had everything in place to do it, we’re getting pretty good at falling back to the last phase.”
