COVID-19 Work Chronicles Week 1

  Yesterday marked my first full week back at to work inside my library building. Although the library is closed to the public, all library staff are permitted to come into work since we're viewed as "essential" employees. The library was closed to the public and staff last week but as I mentioned in a previous blog post after meeting with my boss on Saturday, all staff were instructed to return to work on Monday morning. For the foreseeable future, I will be working Monday-Friday during the day until we reopen to the public after which I will return to working on the occasional Saturday.

     When I arrived at work Monday morning, I initially, thought that having all staff (seven people) in the library at the same time could work as long as staff practiced social distancing. Not to long after my first workday started, I realized that I would have to protect myself from possibly catching COVID by doing my own social distancing from co-workers.

     The second workday back, I could hear two co-workers sneezing and coughing in their respective work cubicles. Although they didn't cough or sneeze near me, I began to worry about catching whatever they have. My anxiety level increase even more this day when both of the aforementioned co-workers left work early for doctor appointments. By the end of my second workday, my nerves were shot.

     By my third workday, my husband strongly recommended that I wear a surgical mask to work since co-workers were not practicing social distancing, are coughing and sneezing. Here's a surgical mask selfie.

   
   As a part of part of my work duties, everyone now has to complete an hour of staff development training a day.To this end, I attended two virtual meetings this week: The Art of Gathering in the Time of COVID-19 presented by the California Center of the Book. This webinar was informative in that the presenters discussed how libraries will need to look for unconventional ways to met in a time when meetings are discouraged due to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

     The second webinar meeting I attended focused on creating a virtual summer reading challenge using Beanstack program presented by ZooBean. This webinar is important since I'm 100% sure that this year's annual summer reading program is going to have to be restructured and things are going to have to be scraped such as paper summer reading logs, giving out physical prizes to kids and the biggest change will be regarding the weekly programs we usually have. Considering that large social gatherings are breeding grounds for COVID-19, we may have to look at alternative ways for the library to engage the community in addition to what I currently do through the library's website and social media.