Our library closed today.
I'm VP of the Board of Macsherry Library, based in the small town of Alexandria Bay NY, up on the northern border along the St. Lawrence River. I've been on the board over 18 years, and to give you an idea how seriously I take our library, and my service to it, over that span I have missed two meetings.
We're in Northern NY, near the Canadian border. We've stayed open during weather most sane folks would consider a blizzard, stayed open during sieges of temperatures in the minus thirties, reopened as soon as we got power back after ice storms and microbursts.
But now, when we may be needed most, we have to close for the safety of our patrons, and for the safety of our staff, few of whom are spring chickens. As a gathering place where physical objects are passed around we constitute a crossroad for transmission. If even one person got sick because of us we would be inconsolable. We have to do our part helping flatten the curve, even if it flattens our hearts.
Our staff are wonderful, and the library will continue for offer what services it can: a little (and new enough to be very clean) shed we had for holding trash cans has been turned into a Little Library by our front door, stocked with books and movies free for the taking. Staff members are working with the school on food delivery. One staff member is doing phone support for folks having trouble downloading books. We're doing online Story Hour, and other things. Our closing does not mean we will stop trying to serve the community.
In this state libraries are governed under State Education law; had we not shut down voluntarily an order from on high would quite likely take that choice away any day now. Our Governor is taking Covid 19 very seriously. As well he should. Closing is inevitable.
At our most recent meeting we worked on ways to cope with what we saw coming, and voted to keep paying our staff, even though the shutdown will chop the head off our fundraising and normal operating income. We're a library. We will scrape up the money somehow, that's the story of any library's existence. And the very moment it is safe to reopen that is what we will do.
One modest library in the middle of all of this counts for little in the grand scheme of things, but damn the hardship it will impose on those we serve. Bowing to what must be done is hard, so very hard.
Stay safe, folks, and I hope you have ample reading material on hand.