Report of the Library Director for June, 2012

Evergreen struggles – new biographies – 226 children register for summer program

Circulation
Circulation numbers for June cannot be accessed because the reports function of Evergreen circulation is not working.  See Evergreen update below.

Digital Content Use
BYKI: In June, 9 users accessed byki for a total of 13.8 hours.  Our top languages were English for Spanish speakers, French, Spanish and German.
Wowbrary: 0 new users signed up for Wowbrary, for a total of 111 active subscribers.
Overdrive: eBook circulation to Upton patrons: 189, eAudio circulations: 31.  This is a new high for most ebooks circulations in one month.

New Patron Registrations
15 new patrons registered in June.

Collection Development
We added approximately 191 items to our collection in June.  This number is high because we added the backlog of items from the two weeks in May that we couldn’t add new items due to the software conversion.

Passport Applications processed in June: 15.  Our total annual revenue from this program and deposited in the general fund was $3,358.90

Programs
Library book group: 7 people met on June 27th.
Senior book group: 4 people met on June 5th.
Thursday storytime averaged 4 children per session for 8 sessions.
TinyTots lapsit averaged 4 children per session for 3 sessions. 
Library Table: 4 visits, averaged 8 patrons and 21 items.
Lego Days: averaged 7 children per session for 4 sessions.

Special Events
Babysitter Training – 12 children attended on June 25th.
Little Red Wagon – 132 people attended the summer reading kickoff on June 27th.

Upcoming Events in June
Tues, July 10th - Storytellers Davis Bates and Roger Tincknell, 2pm at Nipmuc Auditorium.
Tues, July 31st – Lil Folk Farm petting zoo, 10am-noon on Library Lawn.

Plans for Next Month
1) Children’s bookgroups begin
2) Weed adult fiction collection
3) Continue working to improve Evergreen

Summer Reading Program
As of June 30th, 226 children have registered for the summer reading program and received their reading bag.  77 have received prizes from the treasure chest.

Once Nicole returns in July, she’ll be starting our children’s book clubs, including Tinytots for ages 0-3, Magic TreeHouse bookclub for ages 6-12 and Summer Reading study group for ages 12-18.

Collection Development
I purchased and added to the collection a 43 volume set of children’s biographies called the “Who Was” series.  We’ve had a number of Memorial school students asking about this specific series, and after investigating it, I was impressed with the content and format, and was able to purchase the full paperback set from Baker and Taylor at a very reasonable price ($3.10 per volume).

I need to start another significant weeding project on the Adult fiction collection, as our shelves are full again.  I am hoping to combine this with a re-organization of the storage collection and time it so withdrawn items can be ready for the Heritage weekend booksale.  My plan is to use storage space for popular authors with an extensive bibliography, and withdraw titles from the lower-demand authors.

Evergreen Library System
Staff and patrons continue to learn and adapt to the new circulation software.  The single biggest source of frustration with Evergreen is the slow response time.  The difficulties of learning the new system are compounded when response time is so slow.
Routine checkins and checkouts are not affected much, but entering new items, placing holds, and checking item status are all very slow and significantly reduce the productivity of library staff.
Other bugs and problems with the system have surfaced, but most of them are minor and are not apparent to patrons.  Aside from response time, the other upsetting issue is that the reports function of Evergreen is not working.  I can’t generate any circulation statistics, or holdings information.  This problem must be fixed by the end of July, because this information is vital for the ARIS state aid report.
CWMARS is aware of the problems and concerns that library staff have about Evergreen, and they continue to work on fixing them.  An update to the software is being applied on the evening of Monday July 2nd, and on the weekend of July 8th, CWMARS is planning to install more memory on their servers in an attempt to increase response speed.

I am still cautiously optimistic that the issues can be resolved, but I am disappointed in the first month of using Evergreen.  The numerous problems have resulted in service failures to our patrons and frustration for library staff.