Busy July at Carlingwood Branch

How I am participating in the Summer Reading Club

I kind of secrely love working during the summer sometimes, because everyone who comes in is more chill and less stressed. I think, in the long term, if it was feasible, I'd rather be on vacation during the school year. Anyway, here is what we were up to this month at work:

• 877 children have joined SRC at Carlingwood, (up from 710 last year—wow!), and they have read 8,000 books so far!
• 811 children and 324 adults participated in children's programs.
• The children's team did outreach at three different locations, including two City parks! I visited the Olde Forge Day Program at the Ron Kobus Lakeside Centre, and L'Arche Ottawa. Our teen librarian met with a worker from the Carlington Community Health Centre.
• One of our book recommendations was featured on a local blog.
  
• Out teen librarian posted a few blog posts.
• We hosted a really amazing program called Techno Buddies, a pilot project of our wonderful teen librarian. Read about it here! The feedback was amazing: one patron wrote on her feedback form that she had not spoken to a male teen in over 40 years ... and that she might have a crush! Another mentioned he now has a reason to visit the Carlingwood branch - he had not entered the building in 30 years. The older adults wanted to learn everything from how to play Solitaire and Scrabble on an iPad to how to watch movies and TV shows on Netflix, from Facebook to Twitter, from digital photos to digital photo frames, from texting to USB keys.
• One of our teen volunteers also scanned some historical photographs of and articles about Carlingwood Branch. Check a few out here.
• We had our second poetry workshop, coordinated by our amazing local poet. Twelve poets came to Carlingwood to discuss and workshop their poems with Stephen Brockwell. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive: “Excellent leader, generous, sensitive and perceptive. Great discussion of poems by other writers and inspiring insights on contributor's works” and “Cool space. Many thanks to Stephen and the Library.”
• We did our third Digital Media session for the public.
• We compiled the results of the branch Survey for Adults 55+, with the help of a volunteer library technician student. We received 132 surveys by the deadline! Survey respondents are most interested in programs about travel, music, health, gardening, a non-fiction book club, Coffee hour, and financial topics and consumer information. Those who are interested in computer instruction classes are most interested in learning about downloading library ebooks, using the catalogue and databases, and social networking. Afternoons (49%) and mornings (36%) are the best times for programs; on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays.

Personally, I'm pretty wrapped up in Fall program planning, weeding projects (damn eight-digit barcodes ... Don't ask....) and furniture:

• The branch will have an English Conversation Group for adults starting in September, and we will be piloting a Forest of Reading® Golden Oak™ Award book club specifically for adult literacy students in partnership with People, Words & Change.
• We are getting a new "New books" display unit.
• For fun, I put up some more shelf-talkers, including some for French adult fiction and children's.