Family Craft Night occurs once a month and is largely self directed by the patrons. This come and go event has regular attendees and is a big hit with the both the children and their parents.
Supervisor: Renee Kirchner
Monday: 3pm-8pm
Tonight I worked with Angie to help during the Family Craft Night. We set up 9 tables and all the craft supplies. Family Craft Night is an open come and go event lasting 1.5 hours. Angie plans for about 25-30 people to complete crafts and then pre assembles parts of the crafts if needed. She shared a few crafting tips such as having 3 versions of a craft ranging from easy for young kids, mid level difficulty, and a more complex version. Angie also displays completed versions of the craft, has detailed instructions on each table, provides a bucket for families to gather their craft supplies, and displays books for check out on the themed topic. I was in charge of counting the attending patrons (kids and adults counted separately) as it is hard for Angie to both talk to the patrons and keep count of who is coming in to the event. Angie typically works the event alone but has everything set up in a way that allows for patrons to self-direct.
After the Family Craft Event, I worked in the sorting room sorting carts. The cart system is pretty interesting and efficient. . . and measurable! As books are returned, they are automatically sorted into the appropriate bins. From there, staff place the books on carts. Each cart is arranged in a specific order and alphabetized. Each shelver logs a completed cart on a spreadsheet with the number of books on the cart, the time they started organizing and the time they finished. The cart is organized to reflect the path the shelver would need to take to move through the aisles efficiently with no backtracking while shelving. This night seemed busier than I had noticed before, 12 carts were waiting to be organized and by the time I left, 18 carts were completed and waiting to be shelved the next day. The meticulous organization and measurable data collected about the shelving process was very surprising to me. I am not sure that I would have thought to do that on my own. However, for a small, lean library such as LPL, efficiency is extremely important.
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