We submitted our annual report for 2019-2020 at last night’s City Council meeting. I thought I might share some of the highlights with you here, in case you didn’t Zoom into the meeting.
The library was open 254 days last year. (We follow an Oct. 1–Sept. 30 fiscal year as part of the City of Fremont.) That’s about 100 days fewer than usual — because of COVID. We served you with curbside pickup, which helped many of our regular users entertain themselves while staying home. We also continued our homebound deliveries and expanded the service for some of our elderly patrons who were uncomfortable coming to us.
We reduced our hours when we reopened due to staffing shortages. We’re still not open Sundays but are glad to be back serving you 60 hours per week (9:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday.)
Even with the reduction in services and hours, we managed to increase the number of items we checked out each day. In 2018-2019, we checked out 367 items per day on average. This past year, that grew to 437 items per day. I think that shows that Fremont needed its library to help alleviate boredom and supplement school reading.
People are also reading…
Because of the pandemic, we started quarantining all our items when they were returned. We hold them for five days, and check them in on the sixth day. Because this can cause a delay in processing, we backdate the check-in to the date returned to avoid any possible overdue fines. Any that slip through the cracks are waived and documented as COVID fine forgiveness.
We also stopped offering in-person programming when we closed our doors. Fortunately, we discovered that we could offer some limited outreach via Zoom. Our monthly adult book club (Novel Ideas) and our Friday morning storytimes continue to meet through that platform. It’s not the same, but it does fill the void for both the attendees and the staff. Yes, we miss seeing you in person too!
Online resources were more crucial than ever for folks. We saw an increase in the number of downloaded and streamed songs through Freegal, as well as electronic magazine checkouts through Zinio.
If you didn’t know we had those services available, check out our eLibrary web page for links to those resources and so much more. The eLibrary page is linked off our home page (www.fremontne.gov/library).
Thanks for letting me share a little about our past year. We look forward to an even better 2020-2021 annual report!
