Have You Discovered All the Areas of the Library?

By Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian
I spent the first three days of November becoming intimately acquainted with our library’s collection. I touched nearly every one of the adult fiction books that were in the building while we did inventory. I feel a lot like I do after painting a room: lots of reaching and crouching to get to everything on the shelves.

Thank you for your patience while we were closed. We did need all three days, but we got it done. We had two people here from Pioneerland headquarters to help us the first day, but the rest of the time our regular staff were the only ones hard at work, scanning every single item with a barcode in the building. Now we wait for the reports that will tell us which things are in the wrong place, which missing things we found, and which missing things we’d better give up on because they weren’t found. It will be interesting. It should greatly improve our records, after ten years without an inventory.

We handled each section of the library’s collection separately. I wonder if you’ve discovered all of the different places we keep different kinds of items.

Based on the dust, I suspect that our oversized book section is rarely discovered. It’s tucked back against the wall behind the adult computers and the reference shelves, near the small study room. This is a shelf of books that are too big to fit on our regular shelves. They’re all adult nonfiction. Mostly they’re art and history books, with some other books on countries and continents, space, and cooking. I found a giant book on dinosaurs that I’m going to check out for my family, and I thought I’d already looked at every dinosaur book we had here. If you like coffee table books with lots of big pictures, I suggest you browse this hidden collection.

Next to the oversized books, we have a shelf of great books, from Sophocles to Dostoyevsky. I plan to take a look at these to see if the titles have newer duplicates in our regular collection. I suspect that they never get checked out. If you’re a fan of the classics and didn’t know we had this set available to you, take a look at the shelf on that back wall.

Between these back shelves and the computers, we have our reference section. You can find the current Minnesota Statutes and Minnesota Rules, Leonard Maltin’s 2012 movie guide, a current catalogue of collectible postage stamps, and the 2011 CIA World Factbook. It’s my goal to get the outdated books off of those shelves so that we all can easily see the useful things. Some information is just not available on the internet, and it can really be handy to have a well-organized book.

Moving over to the back wall of our rows of adult books, we have our large print collection. All of our large print fiction is here, with the exception of the newest things, which are on the shelf with other new books near the lobby. At the end of the large print hardcovers, we have a few larger print paperbacks. If you need large print or you’d like to be free from your reading glasses while you read a novel, check out this section.

Going past our large print section, you’ll find our adult paperbacks. Some patrons don’t realize we have this section, since it’s in the back corner. If you do a catalog search and find an adult paperback that you want, this is where you’ll find it. Some popular authors have books in our adult hardcovers, adult paperbacks, and large print sections. If you’re just browsing for books by a particular author without doing a catalog search, you’ll want to check all three sections.

Our inspirational/Christian fiction novels have their own special section at the end of the regular adult fiction. If you like to read books by authors like Wanda Brunstetter, Melody Carlson, and Karen Kingsbury, this is where you’ll find them.

Right next to our front desk on the children’s side, you’ll find a shelf of Spanish materials. Most of them are children’s books. A few are adult nonfiction. If you read Spanish or are studying it, I hope you’ll take a look at this special collection.

If you haven’t explored our whole library, I hope you’ll wander around and find some spots you’ve never found before. Or you can always ask a staff member for help finding something. We’ll be glad to guide you.

Library closing for 3 days

The Litchfield Public Library will be closed for inventory on the following days:

• Tuesday, November 1
• Wednesday, November 2
• Thursday, November 3

We are open Monday evening until 8 p.m., and we'll re-open on Friday at 10 a.m.

If you have a meeting currently scheduled in the large meeting room, that will still take place.  You will be able to get to the meeting room but not the rest of the library. 

Story times are cancelled for Wednesday morning and Thursday evening.  We will have preschool storyhour on Friday at 10 a.m.

Our computers will not be available.  The WiFi will still work.  People have found that it works when they're parked in our parking lot.

You can still return books and movies in our outside book drop.  Those items will be stored until Friday.  On Friday morning, we will check in everything that has been returned as though it came in on Monday.

We Prepare for Inventory and I Attend a Library Conference

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian


The Litchfield Public Library will be closed for inventory for three days at the beginning of November: November 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. It has been about ten years since our last inventory, and it desperately needs to be done. We have to close because no items can be checked in or out while the records are being updated. All the same, we know it will be very inconvenient to our customers for us to be closed.

I hope that you’ll be able to plan ahead for the things you’ll need on those days. We’ll be open on Monday, October 31st, and again on Friday, November 4th. The meetings scheduled for the large meeting room will still take place Tuesday through Thursday, because we can close the lobby gates and make just the meeting room accessible to the public. The rest of the library will be unavailable, including our computers. Wednesday morning’s toddler story time and Thursday evening’s family story time will be cancelled for November 2nd and 3rd, but we will have preschool story hour on Friday morning, November 4th.

You will still be able to return your books and other items in our outside book drop. When we open on Friday the 4th, the things that have been returned during the days we're closed will be checked in as though they were returned on Monday the 31st. This will actually give you a few extra days on your items that week. In fact, I plan to be liberal with due dates and movie check-out limits a few days ahead of inventory; the more that we have checked out and the fewer returns that are waiting in stacks for us to return to normal business that Friday, the better.

Other Pioneerland libraries will be open while we’re closed, so you could use the Grove City, Dassel, or Hutchinson libraries that week. If you plan to check out movies at those other libraries, return your Litchfield movies to them so that you don't go over your 6-movie limit.  And of course, you can also use our e-books and downloadable audiobooks while our building is closed.

The library stayed open, obviously, and ran smoothly while I was away at the Minnesota Library Association (MLA) conference from October 12th to 14th. This was the first time I’ve attended this conference, and it was wonderful. Librarians from public, academic, and special libraries throughout the state came together in Duluth for professional development. I attended sessions on summer reading programs, teaching computer skills to older adults, e-books, customer-focused library design, MLA’s leadership development program, and great new books to recommend to patrons. I learned so much.

One keynote speaker spoke about the influence that children’s books have on people’s lives. Another talked about gaming at the library, which has inspired me to consider a series of gaming nights here; I also happened to get a request for such a thing from a patron the same week. Our closing keynote speaker was William Kent Krueger, one of our best Minnesota authors. In the midst of all of this, I got a bit of an orientation to the MLA organization, attended a meeting of rural librarians, met some Minnesota mystery authors, and listened to some potential Legacy performers. One of the best things about attending the conference was the opportunity to talk with librarians from all over the state and find out how they’re handling some of the same issues we face. When we share ideas, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel to improve our services.

Because of the high level of unemployment in Meeker County, and because of their efforts in applying, one library staff member from Grove City and one from Dassel won scholarships to MLA from Project Compass. They both attended workshops on meeting the needs of our communities during this economic downturn, helping job seekers, and supporting small business development. They’ll be sharing this training with the rest of the library staff in Meeker County and probably with all of Pioneerland Library System. I’m hopeful that this will be beneficial to all of our communities.