Monthly report: September 2010

OH MY GOD, IT'S OCTOBER. What the hell?

Sigh.

I thought I would share some excerpts from our September monthly report at the Rideau Library. We get a lot done with our two full-time Information staff (one librarian, one Children's programming and public services supervisor) and 3 full-time Borrower services staff (and a team of fabulous pages and volunteers!)

(By the way, did you know that OPL as a whole had the busiest August on record? Specific #s are here).

• We promoted our Sept. and Oct. programs via e-mail list to community partners with whom we have a relationship (from previous outreach, programs, class vists, group tours, etc.). One of our volunteers also dropped off flyers at several local institutions and businesses.
• Our “Coffee with a police officer” event was a success and we are planning to schedule this as a regular event, approx. every 4 months.
• We have had unprecedented enthusiasm for class visits! We are fully booked for classes throughout October and November. We have 14 groups visiting in October alone.
• We have begun a partnership with a writers’ group.
• We were involved in 4 outreach visits to local schools, daycares and community groups.
• I met or corresponded with with a local BIA, someone from the Mission, the Youth Services Bureau, and a few other groups to discuss future partnerships at Rideau Library.
• We confirmed several free workshops for Winter 2010 with Community Legal Services (Ottawa-Centre), the University of Ottawa Student Legal Aid and the Clinique juridique at the Centre des services communautaires Vanier. The tentative schedule is:

• 26 Jan.: Tenants’ rights
• 2 fév..: Droit des locataires
• 16 Feb.: Workers’ rights
• 23 March: Income maintenance for the elderly
• 6 avril: Successions & testaments
• 18 May: Human rights
  

• I'm still supervising Rockcliffe Park Branch, at least until Nov. 20. That means planning group visits, as well as two author visits, for the branch, and maintaining their schedule.
• Our branch cleared our backlog of material shipped from other branches (we had 30-50 bins) with the help of extra hours for staff. We are also tackling extra-long lists of requests each day; we brought these down from 320-400 to 180-250 requests a day.
• We built displays of staff picks, ESL recommendations, items from the new Good Reads collection, les auteurs Franco-Ont. pour le jour des Franco-Ontariens et des Franco-Ontariennes, back-to-school books, Seuss books (to celebrate the new The Cat in the Hat TV show), and Diary of a Wimpy Kid read-alikes (5th book in series out).
• Our staff attended 4 meetings + 1 training workshop!
• We also trained 2 volunteers + 1 new page!

Whew!