Library

We have a new online program from our awesome Youth Services Department! In addition to storytime on Wednesday mornings through our Facebook page, you can now find “First Chapter Friday” videos for older kids! Every week, Autumn, our Youth Services Librarian or her staff choose a chapter book from our Youth Services Department and read the first chapter. It’s a fun, easy way to discover new books to read.

Speaking of books from our Youth Services Department, somewhere in my house is a copy of “Junie B. Jones” that belongs to the library. It is very seriously overdue. I’m pretty sure it’s in my kids’ room, but between toys, the ruins of both study forts and sadness forts, plus the general “we’ve been home for SO LONG” mayhem, I have no idea where to start looking. My kids swear they can’t find it, so it’s either gone forever or I’ll find it in the first three minutes when I finally get serious about looking.

Luckily, the library staff won’t judge me if/when I admit defeat and pay for its replacement. The lack of judgement isn’t just a perk of working at the library. Between our 13 staff members, we’ve damaged and/or lost our fair share of library materials. Not all of us have a material misadventure story to tell, but most of us have at least one. Those of us with kids and pets have plenty enough to go around!

If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, have no fear and certainly no shame. Just let us know what happened and we’ll work together to make it right. In all honesty, we’d rather have our materials back in usable condition than take your money. We understand that when you borrow library materials they become part of your Life while you have them. Sometimes Life will happen all over those library materials. Let us know and we’ll figure it out together.

I’m not really a sports person, but the sports world has something called a “rebuilding year” that perfectly describes how we’re viewing the next year or two at the Pryor Library.

The Library had normal changes in 2020 that would qualify our next few years as rebuilding years – major staffing changes and a major change in our book vendor – but those changes were coupled with a pandemic that changed our basic service model too. We went from 2019’s enthusiastic “Please come in! Stay as long as you’d like! We love having you here!” to 2020’s cautious “We love having you here, but please keep your visit short.”

As the light at the end of our pandemic tunnel nears, we will slowly begin adding seating back, opening our meeting room, offering in-person programming, and rebuilding our library to the fun place it was pre-pandemic all during an actual, physical build just to spice things up.

Rebuilding never happens as fast as we want, which will make these next few years a challenge for our staff. Our rebuild will happen slowly as the pandemic eases and people trust being out and in social settings more. (Our in-person statistics for 2020 are roughly half what they were in 2019.)

To that end, 2020 must be our new baseline. It would be unfair for us to compare our future, post-pandemic library usage to our pre-pandemic usage. The post-pandemic library world will be so different from the pre-pandemic library world. Libraries, especially our local libraries, will be stronger and better on the other side of this, but it will take us time as a community and an organization to get there.

In the meantime, if you’re not comfortable coming inside yet, we’re offering curbside pickup for materials, digital library services, and phone or email research help for the foreseeable future.

Our digital library is one of our best-used services, especially right now. We belong to a consortium of Oklahoma libraries, the OK Virtual Library, that bands together to purchase ebooks, downloadable audiobooks, streaming videos, and digital magazines through Overdrive (aka Libby).

The consortium owns about 64,000 titles that its almost 16,000 users can check out for up to two weeks. In the last 30 days, we have checked out over 100,000 items as a collective through Overdrive/Libby. It’s a busy place!

The popularity of Overdrive/Libby coupled with the realities of purchasing digital content as a public library means our patrons see long holds lists. We’re so sorry.

Digital content for public libraries is really expensive, so we need the buying power of the consortium to build a good collection. In addition to charging more, publishing companies put strict parameters on how long we can own a digital title and how many times it can check out before we have to buy it again.

To be clear, when libraries buy a digital book, we don’t actually own anything. We are purchasing a license for our patrons (one at a time) to access that title.

Last year, the Library Board approved purchasing local copies of digital content that we can share with the consortium. We just placed an order of the 8 titles with the most holds from our patrons. We spent just shy of $300.

If you purchase these same digital titles as a private citizen, you’d save $100. If you get them in their physical formats, you’d save $80. If the Library gets them in their physical formats, we would save $150. Plus, we’d own them with zero restrictions for as long as they last.

Digital content is here to stay (and print isn’t going anywhere), but until publishers change their rules, our holds lists will continue to be daunting.

I’m writing this article from my dining room table that has been draped in blankets to make the perfect “study fort” for my daughter. She is at home on quarantine. This is our second class-wide quarantine for our kids (one each) and our fifth total quarantine since May. We have been exceedingly lucky that we haven’t gotten sick. (I’m hoping there’s not a “yet” on the end of that sentence.)

Of all the things COVID-19 has revealed about our society, one of the most obvious is that internet connectivity and the technology to access the internet is not a luxury. It is a necessity. I would argue that internet connectivity should be considered a utility.

In today’s world, you need to be able to connect to the internet to do so many things. My kids use it for school, my spouse and I use it to work from home. Internet access is required for a lot of banking, entertainment, communication with the government, and more. In COVID-times, we’ve discovered that internet is vital if you want to receive the COVID vaccine.

While the library can’t provide you with internet access at home, we do have reliable wifi available to you 24 hours each day both in the building and in our parking lot. We also have six internet computers for adults in the library that you’re welcome to use. We have staff on hand who can help get you started. We can’t tell you how to fill out forms or give medical or legal advice, but we’re happy to help you get where you need to go and do what you need to do.

In addition to helping navigate the internet on our computers, we have gotten pretty good at helping patrons learn how to use their own devices. We are especially good at helping you get your Overdrive or Libby accounts services and set up.

If you need help navigating online or learning a device, give us a call.