Technology Nights in June – Kids enjoy Lego Program – New staff computer installed.
Circulation
Circulation for May was 4,024 items. This is a decrease from last month (9.7% decrease), but higher than May of last year (7.2% increase).
4,155 items were checked out at Upton’s circulation desk, and 570 interlibrary loan requests were placed by Upton staff.
Our Laptops were checked out 22 times in May.
Digital Content Use
BYKI: 56 users accessed byki for a total of 120 hours in May. The most popular languages were French and Japanese, followed by German, Italian and Spanish.
Wowbrary: 2 new users signed up for Wowbrary, for a total of 75 active subscribers, and the newsletters produced 36 click throughs to the library catalog.
Overdrive: eBook circulation to Upton patrons: 33, eAudio circulations: 10
New Patron Registrations
14 new patrons registered in May.
Collection Development
We added approximately 78 items to our collection in May.
Computer News
Staff Laptop – has arrived and is connected to the Town’s municipal server. All staff have accounts and town email address accessible through this computer. I have started to move library files and archives to be stored on the town server, where they will be automatically backed up and accessible to other town departments as needed.
Public computers security software – I received a price quote on “Deep Freeze” software, which was much lower than I expected: $237.10 for up to 10 workstations for the first year, and $39.50 for annual maintenance fee for each year after that. Since the price was so low, I went ahead with the purchase and installation of this software. What it does is make an image of your computer harddrive and revert to that image each time the computer is restarted. This eliminates any viruses, downloads, saved files or configuration changes made by users. This will save Matthew a lot of time manually fixing problems, and lets us relax our policy on downloads and software installation, because everything will go away on shutdown. It also protects patrons’ privacy in case they accidentally save a password or file on a public computer.
Circulation Computer replacement – The Town Manager has informed me that there are sufficient funds in the FY11 Technology budget to replace another library computer. My priority is to replace the circulation computers in preparation for the new software coming in October. This computer should be arriving and installed in mid-June.
Passport Applications
Matthew has completed the online training for Passport Acceptance Agent. I have submitted our application to become a Passport Acceptance Facility, and we are now waiting for that application to be processed by the Federal Government before we can start offering the service.
Technology Nights
Our first two Technology workshops are scheduled for June 14th and June 21st, 7pm-8pm at the Library. The format will be a 15 minute demonstration and then an open question and discussion period. Initially I will not ask for registration, but that may be necessary in the future.
June 14th will be on “Borrowing ebooks from the Library for your personal eReader”, and June 21st will be “Using gmail and other free google applications”
I hope to get on a regular schedule of the second and fourth Tuesday of each month, but June 28th is our Summer Reading Kick-off so I rescheduled to June 21st.
Legos Program
We’ve been holding a Lego Days program at the Library on Thursday afternoons in May and June. These programs are sponsored by HEMA, an organization that provides services to adults with disabilities. The first few events were an experiment to see how the program would work, if we had enough space, and how much staff time it would require.
Basically the program consists of putting a bunch of legos on a table, and letting 6 to 8 children be creative for an hour, and then displaying their results on a shelf in the library. The kids have been extremely well behaved and require minimal supervision.
Our first three sessions have been very successful, and I have a large waiting list of patrons that are interested in participating in the future. The HEMA volunteers have a limited schedule, so I am going to proceed with expanding this program as a library event, and offering multiple sessions during the summer.
Programs
Library book group: 9 people met on May 25th.
Senior book group: 7 people met on May 3rd.
Thursday storytime averaged 7 children per session for 8 sessions.
TinyTots lapsit Tinytots storytime averaged 17 children per session for 3 sessions, Tinytots is not held during the summer months.
Library Table: 4 visits, averaged 8 patrons and 20 items.
Special Events
May 12th – 8 Boy Scouts visit the library as part of their communication badge.
May 25th – 60 3rd Graders have library tours as part of Town Government field trip.
Upcoming Events in June
June 4th – Garden Day: plant swap, 4-H bunnies, gardening workshops, raffle
June 21st – Summer Reading registration begins
June 28th – 6:30pm Summer Kickoff children’s theatre performance at Nipmuc HS
Plans for Next Month
1) Summer Reading Begins.
2) Technology Nights.
3) End of year Financial matters.
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