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CARIBOU, Maine — The Caribou Public Library is closed to the public until at least May 1, but staff are keeping in touch with patrons by providing numerous online resources and posting videos of their popular storytime events throughout the month.
Caribou Public Library Director Hope Shafer said she and staff are posting relevant information on the library website and Facebook page for people who are at home.
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“We’re keeping people informed on things like changes in the due date for taxes,” she said. “People sometimes forget about normal things like taxes because we’re all caught up with COVID-19.”
The library is also providing links on its site to cloud libraries now offering its subscription services for free — something she said librarians across the nation are doing during the pandemic.
Staff members who are particularly at risk for COVID-19 are staying home and the remaining staff at the library are cataloging books, rigorously cleaning and making sure the facility is more accessible to patrons once the library reopens.
Shafer said the library will allow the children who are home from school to drop off their textbooks through the door. Once the books arrive, they go into a 14-day quarantine and will eventually be returned to the schools.
Children’s Librarian Erin Albers has also been busy maintaining the library’s regular storytime programs by recording videos of herself reading and uploading them to the facility’s Facebook page.
“We saw that some other libraries were doing it, and I decided it was something I would try to tackle,” Albers said. “After I recorded the first one, I got a little more comfortable with the idea, and I’m having fun with it now.”
The first video went out on March 25 and featured Albers reading a picture book. As she and other staff clean and organize books in the library, Albers said she sets aside books that would be suitable for the videos.
“We scheduled the posts to come out at the same time as our weekly preschool program, so kids would say ‘Oh yeah, it’s Wednesday afternoon storytime at the library’,” Albers said.
After the first day, Albers decided to add a chapter book, “The Boxcar Children”, to the rotation for older kids. These videos are being posted five times a week and Albers said she plans to alternate chapter books between classic stories and shorter, more recent, books.
With uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, Albers said she is prepared to continue reading books to children online as long as she needs to.
“I’d consider continuing even after the library opens again if there’s enough interest,” she said.
And plenty of parents and children are already showing interest online. The first video had more than 400 views and featured comments from normal patrons as well as people who normally don’t attend the reading programs.
“We’ve gotten a few comments from parents of preschoolers that have been really cute,” she said. “When a 4-year-old watches me on the screen, it looks like I’m talking to them, and one little boy told his parents that ‘Ms. Erin keeps talking to me’ because I would pause and ask questions while I’m reading. He’d say ‘How does she keep talking to me?’ which I thought was really cute.”
And older children in the middle school book club are continuing to meet and discuss what they’ve read via the Zoom conferencing app.
The library is planning a special April 8 Easter egg decorating event online, which will be broadcast live on Facebook.
“We’ll have our supplies out on the table and they’ll be able to tell us what to use to decorate the egg, like a red stripe or sprinkles, because they can comment while we’re live on video,” said Albers.
And while library staff adapt to the situation by using technology in new ways, both Albers and Shafer said they’re excited to eventually reopen.
“We’re anxious just like everybody else is to be open to the public,” Albers said. “But we understand that right now it’s just not smart to be out and moving around. We look forward to seeing everybody again.”
“We miss our patrons dearly,” Shafer said. “But we remind ourselves daily that by closing our doors, we have the potential to save lives since a lot of our patrons are very young or elderly.”
In the meantime, Shafer and staff still at the library are practicing social distancing and answering phones throughout the day.
“We miss our patrons as much as they miss the library and we’re hoping they all stay safe,” Shafer said.
