We are finishing week 4 of our summer reading program here so it is time for another roundup! This week went very smoothly, so that means next week probably won't. Kidding. I hope.
We have had quite a lot of interest in signing up for summer reading but very few people have returned their logs. It will be interesting to see if it's just procrastination or taking longer than normal. I won't be at work the last day of summer reading (wedding) so I hope people come in before then with their finished logs so the poor staffers who are working won't be too slammed.
By the way, does anyone else work in a small town? I am curious what those of us who live in more rural communities do for summer reading and what numbers they expect? Our service area is around 20,000 residents in size. So I struggle when I try to compare our numbers with some people who work in much more populated areas.
Our municipal population is 10,000, our service population is around 23,000 (we serve surrounding townships, although they don't give us any money, dang them!)
ReplyDeleteI had 800 kids, age 0-18 sign up for summer reading last year and I'm very close to that this year. However, only about 200 of the 6-12 age group "finish" i.e. read 10 hours and only about 20 of the 40 teens actually turned in review slips. The 0-5 program is new this year, so we'll see how that goes.
We are the largest library in our county - most of the other small libraries have around 300-500 sign ups, I think.
Jennifer at JeanLittleLibrary
We hit just around 500 for kids and teens sign up and our service area is 23,000. I'll have to make a post about how we do this year re: completion so that you can see it.
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons we got up to 800 last year was I made a vigorous effort to get every single kid that walked into the library signed up. We did some extra outreach this year and I could probably have hit 1000 if I put the same effort into it...but to be honest I'm just so exhausted this summer that I haven't gone that extra step to try to persuade every kid I see. I just don't have the energy.
ReplyDeleteJennifer at JeanLittleLibrary (bloggers security feature has decided to hate me, which is why I'm going anonymous)
Hi all, We serve two small towns with about 12,000 as our population overall. I'm new to the manager's position this year and have only worked at this particular library for a little over a year now. We have about 220 kids signed up for our K-5 program, with about 100 signed up for the Tots program (0-5yrs). I have been told that this is the most we have ever had signed up for the program. I have the kids reading by minutes and can turn in their logs after 1-3 hours depending on age. The kids have been doing great with their logs and turning them in and our program attendance has been awesome (many programs have a wait list because we don't have the room). I think that our sign up numbers and attendance are because I made the extra effort to visit the schools before they got out for the summer and give a little 10 minute presentation on our theme, prizes, and programs for the SRP. My predecessor (totally mangled that word!) didn't do this in past years. I hope this helps!
ReplyDeleteAmy at Manhattan-Elwood Public Library in Illinois.