Office Supplies

I'm keeping a running list of supplies that we need at the branch so that we can buy things all at once and hopefully place orders less frequency. I'll keep the sheet on the reference desk for now. Please make a note if you notice that we're getting low on anything, i.e. scotch tape, rubber bands, etc.

January Computer Class

We'll be offering a second introduction to computers class at some point in January. The class will be limited to 5 new students who were not enrolled in the December 8th intro to computers class. The sign-up sheet is on the reference desk.

Jah-Tu Allowed in Library

Jah-tu (red sweatshirt, black bubble vest), previously banned from the library, is now allowed back in the library. He came in on Monday afternoon with his older brother Jah-ru. Jah-tu apologized for being disrespectful to the library staff and his older brother accepted responsibility for Jah-tu's behavior.

Jah-tu is on a probationary period for the next several months. If he shows any defiance or disrespect he will again be banned from the library pending a meeting with his parents.

Book Sale

Just a reminder that we are now manually keeping a tally of all of the books sold in the book sale. We are the first branch to do this and if we can show that it is a successful program maybe other branches will follow...

Summer Reading Program

Last week I attended the first Summer Reading Program meeting for summer 2011. Here are a few tentative outcomes from that meeting:

• SRP participants will receive a "reading passport" with blank pages for library stamps. Each branch will represent one of the 7 continents and will have a stamp of their continent. When a kid comes in to report on what they've read, we will stamp their passport. This will encourage kids to visit all of the different branches to collect all of the different stamps. North Albany is Asia. We will have various SRP events that may or may not have an Asia theme.
• I believe there will be one major kickoff event to start Summer Reading. This was held at Delaware last year. Not sure about this year yet.
• Last year's sign and reporting was all done online. This year we will return to paper signup/reports. Not sure if we will also have an online component for this...

We'll be having more meetings as it gets closer to summer. We're going to be having various programs to encourage kids to sign up and I'd like to do outreach with the YMCA and the school when the time comes. I'm looking for any and all ideas on how we can get our numbers up. Although it's a long time off, start thinking about programs, ideas, etc...

New Blog for APLY Staff Communication

After the meeting this morning, I think it occurred to all of us that we don't really have a consistent system for communicating with each other here at APLY. Because we are such a small staff, I don't think it has been a problem, but now would probably be a good time to set something up. So let's try this blog.

I've never done this, so this will probably be an ongoing experiment for a while. I hope that we can all post our thoughts on how to use this blog effectively or whether we should use it at all. At this point, I think the primary goal is to make everyone comfortable with using it as a knowledge-sharing tool on a regular basis. After we are all familiar with posting and reading regularly, we can hopefully iron out the details of format, content, etc.

Although I sent an invitation to each of our 'work emails' that I pulled from the list, I quickly realized that you need an existing gmail account to log in. So scrap the idea of 4 separate email/author accounts, discard the invitation to your email, and for now let's just stick with the default North Albany account.


My ideas for making this blog useful:

1. Log into the blog on circ1 computer every day as part of the opening procedure.
2. Throughout day, post any information relevant to branch operations: news, library incidents, displays, policies, questions, new ideas, programming, etc.
3. Create separate, new post for each new topic. So we will likely have several new posts per day.
4. Use the comments to contribute to the discussion brought up in the post.
5. Make an effort to read and comment on all of the new posts and comments.

There are only four of us, so I think this can be pretty manageable. But in order for this to work, we would all have to read and contribute with regularity. What does everybody think? Do you guys want to try this? Ideas?