Getting started...

We are six months into our new building and we still enjoy the newness of our building. The sights, smells, textures, and sounds of our new/old building are refreshing. Everyone has had a positive response to our new building, nary a discouraging word has been heard about the building, not so our hours.

We opened originally 4 days per week, Monday through Thursday from 10 AM to 8 PM 40 hours per week. That was what we could afford. We went from staffing less than 10,000 square feet of building spread over 2 floors to staffing 23,000 square feet of building spread over 3 floors - what a jump - 308% growth! It took everyone we had to cover the 40 hours, forget about the 48 hours we had been open. Not everyone, let me revise, no one thought 40 hours a week was enough. We selected the schedule that we did for a couple of reasons: one, it gave us service hours for all groups - morning, afternoon, and evening; and second, it gave us evenings for the expanded programming that our building allowed us.

By summer staff was running on empty being here for 4 10 hour days, and with school out the library board changed our hours to 5 days per week with only 1 evening. So far this change has worked out fairly well and as we go into September I think we will maintain this schedule.