We’re All Adults Here
Book Recommendations & Other Musings
by Carol Tuttle
Library Work in a Safe, Virtual World
Two months of working virtually was an interesting experience. For me, maintaining and enriching our digital access was not impacted by working remotely. I am so glad that we were able to offer access to the reading experiences that you love while our buildings are closed to the public. Holds in our catalog are working for materials we own, and curbside pickup of books is available https://we247.org/curbsideservice/ . We are creating a plan for starting limited public access to our buildings very soon, but the safest library access is still our digital access https://we247.org/fromhome/.
Two impacts of the pandemic have been felt especially by librarians and readers:
First, book release dates have changed! The publishing world (and film production) has been upended by the pandemic closures. Many books (and movies) we thought we would be seeing in June or July have been pushed off to the future, in some case to 2021. If you placed holds in our catalog on these upcoming books hoping to get them in June, your holds remain but it will be longer before they arrive now.
Second, author tours for the newest releases have abruptly stopped as in-person events and now are online events. The upside of this is that authors are much more available (and often for free) when doing virtual events: no travel time or costs! WEPL has THREE exciting virtual author visits coming up in June, so be sure to register for the zoom events using the Events Calendar on our website: https://welibrary.evanced.info/signup/Calendar
One tradition for readers you may be wondering about: Summer reading for children, tees and adults will be happening! WEPL has acquired Beanstack, an app (and website) for virtual summer reading. No worries, if you don’t care to do the online version yourself, building staff will be happy to help you participate. More details coming soon, so watch our website and Facebook page.
We have missed you and look forward to seeing your smiling eyes above your masks when you pickup curbside now or return to the buildings in the near future.
Carol Tuttle is the Collection & Digital Services Manager for the Willoughby-Eastlake Library System. She is currently reading The Fifth Avenue Story Society by Rachel Hauck.
