Saturday, April 23, 2011

This week at the library; or, this is SPRING?

We started our Spring Break with several inches of snow on Monday. If it came in December, it would be pretty. As it was, I muttered some very un-children's-librarian-like words as I scraped off my car.

Monday was meetings, with the local elementary school librarians to plan the library's hosting of Battle of the Books and with my director and adult services librarian to finalize summer planning and scheduling. We were talking for two hours and we're still not done! Then I raced over to Walmart to get t-shirts for our t-shirt decorating program.

Tuesday was t-shirts! We've done this every spring I've been here, making this the third year, and each year I learn something. This year we used Eventbrite for the first time. It was very successful, except that they apparently send a lot of emails to the people who sign up. I had to up the number of registration spots and we ended up with 30 kids from around age 2 to 12 signed up.

First lesson: Sizes don't match. People listed sizes from 3T to 7-8 Children's to XSmall. Insanity! Next year I will have a ticket for each size so people don't have to try to figure it out. Related to first lesson, when I opened my t-shirt packets, the sizes were miniscule. Last year they were all huge, so this year I bought boys instead of adult (I buy men's undershirts. They're cheap). Note to self: Next year, buy some of both!

Second lesson: At least 10 people who hadn't signed up showed up - and several people who had signed up brought friends. Have extras. I did have enough, thanks to sending our adult svs librarian on an emergency run to Walmart b/c of the shirts being too small.

Third lesson: Because extra people showed up, and because t-shirts take up a LOT OF SPACE, have all the tables out in the community room. And extra paint.

I also figured out that tracing paper works as well or better than regular paper with fabric crayons, that if you're going to invite small children you should cover the tables before they get near the paint, and we need brown fabric markers.

I estimate about 50 people attended. Bigger and better, year after year! Oh, and I cancelled all storytimes this year, partly b/c Pattie is gone and I can't do them all myself, partly b/c we need to spread out the shirts somewhere and the Storyroom is really the only place.

We had a good group for Lego Building Club on Wednesday. Our theme was "creepy castles" because I didn't want to explain to the kids why they were building models of Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher (long, complicated story).

We showed Voyage of the Dawn Treader on Thursday and I had about 10 kids. Lots of coming and going, since most of the kids had parents picking them up or lost interest.

Yay three day weekend! We're closed on Friday and I just have to come in to turn the eggs...

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