Hello There Again

Hi there. How's it going? Are you well? Are you working? Are you holding it together? 

I'm holding it together. I'm working. I'm as well as anyone can be right now. I'm reading again, which is lovely. I'm going to see about blogging again. We shall see. Here's what's up with me: 

Photo of Abby wearing a protective mask with due dates stamped on it and holding a paper with a long list of holds to pull

I'm back in the library full time with the option to work from home whenever I want. This is one benefit of having a "behind the scenes" job. Honestly, I find it stressful to work from home. It seems like everything takes five times as long and when I'm home I want to be home and not at work. So I am preferring to be in the office right now. 

Our library has just started the first phase of opening to the public by offering computer appointments and hold pickup and self-checkout. We're only allowing patrons into the lobby right now and we don't have any browsing set up. Our schools are supposed to go back next week (!!) and families have the option to choose virtual learning. 

Since we're only doing curbside pickup (no browsing), our holds pull list is massive every morning, particularly on Mondays, which is when I took the photo above. I try to help out as much as I can when the public and customer service teams get busy. 

Currently, our staff is working in 2 teams so that we don't have so many people in the building at once. Since I'm there every day, I'm trying to be careful to not get too close to anyone. I'm working out of one of our meeting rooms on the days when our assistant is in our office because I know the air stagnates in there. 

We debuted Grab Bags and Book Care Packages to try to get some of the collection moving. It's so sad to see our Children's Room crammed full of popular series when it's NOT supposed to be like that in the summer. There are Pigeon books on the shelf! And Dog Man! And Raina Telgemeier! 

Now, with school looming, we're looking at resources we can provide to help new homeschoolers and families tackling virtual learning as well as our teachers and students. 

It's hard. 

It's hard to not know what's going to happen. 

It's hard that things are changing so frequently. 

It's hard to concentrate on work when you're worried about getting sick, worried when coworkers call in sick (is it THE VIRUS?), worried about next year's budget... 

And that's how things are right now. We're working incredibly hard to provide the services that we can. It doesn't feel like enough and yet some days it feels like too much to handle. 

How are you? 

PS: Blogging about books is coming. I'm trying to figure out a way to make it sustainable, but I really miss sharing about great books on here. Coming soon. Stay tuned.