We chose NOT to offer virtual events at our Library but I thought I would still share what we are doing.....

We just started our summer reading program this week and we opted for more of a hands-on approach by creating take home activity kits instead of doing virtual events.  We figured that most people during the shutdown were online so much that they were probably getting bored with it.  With that said, we have so far seen just over a 50% drop in sign-ups....but we only have a 35% drop in actual participation.  During past years, we normally would have a lot of children sign up and we're lucky to have 50% of them actually participate in our previous year's programming.  This year about 75% of those that signed up have actually been participating, keeping in mind that we just started this week so there's hope that our attendance keeps increasing.  

The take home kits are basically like a goodie bag filled with little activities such as creative arts/crafts projects, toys, reading logs, etc. as well as an activity sheet that they can complete/return for a small prize.  Each week we have a different theme for our goodie bags while trying to keep it aligned with "Imagine Your Story".  Granted we just started handing out our first kits this week but they seem to be going pretty well so far and have had positive reactions.  Overall, the kits did not cost much to put together and the only difficult part is trying to guess how many people will sign-up/participate in order to know how much stuff to purchase in advance.  Odds are we're going to have a lot of random stuff left over but it has been a lot of fun coming up with ideas for the kits.

Hopefully everyone's numbers will get better....fingers crossed for next year!

From: Michlib-l <michlib-l-bounces@mcls.org> on behalf of Teresa Natzke via Michlib-l <michlib-l@mcls.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 9, 2020 1:58 PM
To: Don Priest <dpriest@southgate.lib.mi.us>
Cc: Michlib-l <michlib-l@mcls.org>
Subject: Re: [Michlib-l] Virtual Summer Reading numbers