News

This year’s budget process was a little different than in years past. This year, I got to consult our Strategic Plan, which shaped our budget requests. I considered seven specific activities of our Strategic Plan while preparing our budget. 

Three of these activities ensure we have adequate funding for our physical and online collections, one ensures we have enough to refresh our play area in the Youth Services Department, and two ensure our staff can attend continuing education training. The seventh activity: “Research and implement the steps necessary to expand our hours to 55 hours per week…” had me looking at our staffing in each area of the library. 

Ideally, we will be open 55 hours (instead of our current 43 hours) each week by the end of June in 2022. To do this, we need to make sure we have enough staff to cover all of our desks while we’re open. There are several steps necessary to make this transition happen, but the big one we took this fiscal year was to ask for another full-time position. 

Having a sixth full-time position will do a lot for our library. It will ensure consistent and excellent service in our Computer Lab, which will free up staff in other parts of the library to concentrate on the tasks of their particular desks. It will also add an additional voice and increased talent to the services we currently offer. These bonuses will make the library stronger and better able to serve our community. 

Ultimately, our goal with all of our services, including the staff we employ, is to make your Pryor Library the best library we can. Our community deserves the library services and assistance they need, not just what the staff has time for. With increased hours and increased staffing to go with it, I think we’ll be headed in the right direction to make that happen.

Ta-da!

We’re so excited to reveal our new logo!

Last Monday, July 1st, was the first day of our new fiscal year. Like most people do at the traditional New Year, we’ve made some lofty goals for our new fiscal year. We are now, officially, working the Strategic Plan that we put together.

Our Strategic Plan gives us a lot of goals to accomplish during its three years. This year, we’re working on roughly 14 new or newly refocused activities! These 14 things can be divided into four broad categories: ideas for improvement that we will study and evaluate in order to decide if we can begin and sustain them, actions we definitely will take, documentation we will create, and activities we have done in the past that will now have a renewed or different focus. 

Some hi-lights of what we will accomplish in the next year:

We will begin evaluating whether to include obituary information from all newspapers we own (past and present) in our online catalog. We will also begin evaluating whether storytime classes at area daycares and/or schools is something our staff has time for and the community needs. 

We will formally select and purchase the curriculum we will use for our English Language Learning and Adult Literacy tutoring. We will review and update the Library Board of Trustees’ by-laws. 

We will create a new Technology Plan. We will document our IT procedures.  

We will continue to offer staff continuing education in a variety of ways and require that all staff working more than 20 hours per week have at least one continuing education credit per fiscal year. 

Don’t miss this week’s Summer Reading events!

Monday: Legal Aid: Free advice & where to get more @ 6:30 PM (adults)

Tuesday: Planetary Painting with Jenna @ 10:00 AM & 2:00 PM (ages 5-11)

Wednesday: Storytime @ 10:30 AM (ages 0-4)

Thursday: Eating in Space @ 6:30 PM (ages 12-18)

Some of your Pryor Library staff have been eagerly discussing the new Amazon Prime show “Good Omens” and how it compares to the book of the same name. 

We agree: both the book and the show are delightful. 

The book, published in 1990, effortlessly combines the talents of its authors, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Independently, these two award-winning authors offer readers enthralling and entertaining journeys through the worlds they create. Together in “Good Omens,” they have created a narrative full of whimsy and insight into human nature. Their characters are real and complex with inter-weaving relationships that shape the course of the story’s events. 

Reading the book, it’s clear the authors had an amazing time writing it. Their enjoyment seeps through the pages and makes reading (or listening to) “Good Omens” a light-hearted adventure despite the fact that it details the end of the world.

The show “Good Omens” was written by Neil Gaiman (Terry Pratchett passed away in 2015), which means the joy and whimsy are also present in the show. The casting of Michael Sheen as the angel Aziraphale and David Tennant as the demon Crowly is nothing short of brilliant. Their embodiment of the two main characters in “Good Omens” makes this one of the best adaptations we’ve ever watched. We highly recommend both formats!

Whichever format you choose, you can cross off BINGO squares in the Adult Summer Reading Program with this gem!

Don’t miss this week’s Summer Reading events:

Monday: Wine Cork Projects at 6:30 PM (adults)

Tuesday: Astronaut Training Camp at 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM (ages 5-11)

Wednesday: Storytime at 10:30 AM (ages 0-4)

Thursday: Closed for Independence Day

Saturday: Books & Brews Club at Fat Toad Brewing at 1:00 PM. We’ll be discussing “In a Sunburned Country” by Bill Bryson.