Kendra (left) and Divyne Mandel browse for some summer reading material at the Medicine Hat Public Library on Tuesday afternoon. The facility is again open to the public as of this week.--NEWS PHOTO COLLIN GALLANT
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
The Medicine Hat Library is open again for business this week, with plans to get operations back up to speed and complete renovations before a major welcome-back celebration likely in the fall.
At the same time, the library presented its 2020 annual report to the community to Monday’s meeting of the city’s public services committee.
The open-again, closed-again nature of pandemic precautions was undoubtedly a curveball from a new plan of service to increase visitors to the downtown, say officials.
“We’re pretty proud that we found a way to adjust our services and in the way that the community responded,” head librarian Ken Feser said Tuesday. “It’s not been the same or what we’d want, but it does show just how much of need there is in the community for our services.”
Feser says a personal highlight was being able to continue book lending for seniors and others who felt isolated in the early days of the pandemic, and online service delivery had to fill in when in-person programming (the library’s focus for several years) wasn’t possible.
The branch closed to the public for a total of 19 weeks and operated at reduced capacity or under restrictions for much of the remainder.
“I could just sit here and whine about 2020,” said board chair Rick Redmond in his presentation at city hall. “But I’d rather concentrate on the positives.”
In terms of online programs, 168 broadcasts produced by staff were viewed about 88,000 times. Between in-person programs from early 2020, then events like Zoom book clubs, 3,800 children attended 178 events, 250 events aimed at teens involved 3,400 attendees, and 6,600 adults.
Accessing material through online portals was successful with 20,600 books lent in e-reader format, and the press reader subscription service for members led to nearly 850,000 articles read remotely. Almost 135,000 physical books, movies and other materials were distributed over 12 months.
Through that and up to today, the library avoided long-term layoffs of permanent staff during closures, repurposing staff to handle outreach and revamped operations such as curbside pickup and delivery as well as online presentations like story time for toddlers.
But, on-call and part-time staff haven’t seen shifts for more than a year, said Feser. That will begin to change as operations increase this summer and toward the fall.
As well, he said, the lower level of operations will allow some facility work to be completed, and as such little in-person programming is planned for the short term.
The reduced operation in 2021 will help the library grapple with a reduced budget for this year, according to the report.
In 2022, it concludes, “we will have to increase our services and return to a new normal with significantly less budget.”
