Warsaw Community Public Library was able to reopen its doors to the community Feb. 1.
At the library board meeting Monday, Director Ann Zydek said the pandemic metrics have changed in the county, going from red to orange, which has allowed the library to reopen its doors.
“We’ve heard from a lot of people that the curbside pick-up was very smooth this time since we had done it last year,” Zydek said.
An opportunity the library is seeing with the pandemic is the educational assistance the library can provide in regards to the COVID-19 vaccine. If someone has questions about registering for the vaccine, Zydek said people can check out the library’s website and people will see information at the bottom of the page in regards to doing the registration themselves.
In other business, the annual report was put together, Zydek said. Administrative Assistant Robin Fosnaugh was very helpful in getting staff members together to work on the report.
One of the things Zydek noticed when the library’s annual report was put together was the library was closed for almost 13 weeks in 2020, from mid-March through mid-June, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
There are changes that happened during 2020, such as services going virtual and things that had to be called in for, Zydek said.
When a lot of people got tired of screen time, they were able to pick up Take It and Make It Crafts curbside, which allowed people to do different crafts, Zydek said.
Zydek said she hoped the library board members had fun going through the annual report.
“We never had a year like last year,” she said.
After the board meeting, the board held a board retreat. Zydek talked about where the library stands with the strategic plan.
Board members gave possibilities of things that incorporated the goals in the strategic plan into future things the library could do.
Board member Jill Beehler suggested the library continue WiFi into the library’s parking lot. Zydek said the library is planning on doing that, noting the hotspots the library has also seems to be popular.
Board member Barbara Beck suggested if the library is to keep StoryTime, to record it. Board member Jenn Hicks suggested that it could be a new collection – a collection of stories.
Zydek said if the library keeps StoryTime, they have to find out how long they can keep each story up as different publishers have different amounts of time they will allow the story to be online. She noted the end of the year is usually when the library would have to take it down.
