WESTLOCK — The Westlock Inter-Municipal Library opened its doors to walk-in public on Monday, with limited hours, the last step in a phased reopening process.
The requirements are pretty straightforward, and they follow what most other public places and libraries have been doing. They’re asking folks to wear masks inside — they’ll provide them to people who forget theirs — sanitize their hands when they go in, and that they limit the time they spend inside to 30 minutes. Those who prefer curbside pickup for books still have that option available.
“If you’re sick, please don’t come in. I think one of the concerns we’ve already had in those few days that we’ve been open is children that are staying home from school because of a cold or a cough, we’ve had a couple wanting to come here during the day.” director Lisa Old told the News Oct. 8.
“That’s kind of huge.”
Computer use is still by appointment, but the time limit there is one hour; one-on-one tech help is available Thursday afternoons.
Items that people touch or that arrive from the Yellowhead Library interlibrary exchange go straight into a four-day quarantine, and to make room for it, library staff moved their office into the back boardroom they normally use for events.
“One of the biggest challenges we had to opening (and why we didn’t open earlier) … is we don’t have a lot of workspace for our staff,” Old said.
In order to separate the quarantined material from staff and public, they used the last six months to shift things around and move the extra furniture (gone for social distancing) into a storage place.
“That was the biggest reason why we didn’t open up earlier, it was just getting to that point. And then it was announced that schools would be opening, and we thought ‘Let’s see what happens.’ We have a school right behind us and we have a lot of kids who come to the library after school and during lunch hours. We didn’t want to have to worry about that risk.”
Plexiglass screens are up at the customer service desks, and they’re sanitizing everything.
“As a staff and as a board, we felt that we put in enough precautions that we were able to set ourselves up so we could work safely and serve our customers safely,” said Old.
They’ve also limited their public hours to Monday to Thursday, 9-30 a.m.-12 p.m. and 1-4 p.m.
“At this moment, there is no other programming apart from the online programming. But that is why we’re closed on Friday. We thought a lot about closing for one day during the week so we could do the virtual programming. We have a rather large green screen and a puppet theatre, and we were doing a lot of that programming in the main public area, which of course we can’t do if there’s public walking around.”
There’s some plans in the works, Old said, to add some programming on Fridays or some evenings, pre-registered only and limited: an ancestry.ca program, the adult book club which is starting soon, and a world blocks competition.
