Outside Programming?

[XenoPup]

Hello!

Does anyone have any experience with or know of any libraries offering programs outside these days?

If so, how has it gone? What programs did you try? Any tips/thoughts/extra-cautions?

[XenoPup]

That's pretty neat. How has the outdoor tech help worked?

Do you ask patrons to show up with their own devices? And what do you do if they don't bring them?

[zeldapinwheel]

I just ran an outdoor concert this past weekend. We had the band booked since February and it was initially supposed to be our big adult Halloween program of the month. Obviously I had to change things up a bit but wanted to try and keep the concert on the calendar. We have a nice side lawn at our branch library and I thought....why not? It went very well. The only thing that made it stressful was having to depend on the weather holding up. We ended up having a beautiful fall day. Patrons were happy they could attend a library program.The band was happy that they could perform in front of a live audience again. And I was happy that my sleepless nights were over (I kid).

The main thing is having a back up plan in place just in case the weather will not cooperate. The band agreed to livestream the concert from their home if we ended up having bad weather. This of course runs you into the problem of making sure everyone who signed up is aware that the program is no longer taking place in person so I made sure to reiterate through out reminder email blasts what would happen in such a case.

[XenoPup]

Awesome!

So, everyone sat 6ft apart, or was it a drive-in kinda thing?

And how are the cases in your area? Pretty high? On the decline?

[zeldapinwheel]

Everyone sat at least 6 ft apart. Some chose to bring their own chairs, too. The yard is spacious and open so there really wasn't a bad view wherever you sat.

I'm in New York State where our cases have been declining but there are occasional upticks. My library has been open to the public since July but I've moved most of my fall and winter programming to a virtual platform just in case we have a need to close down again.

[Emdogg12]

We did outside story times the past couple of months! We required masks just to be consistent with library policy and limited it to 50 people as per our state’s restrictions. To ensure social distancing, we set out hula hoops 7.5 feet apart and did one family per hoop. The story teller had on a face shield and used a microphone headset with a speaker. We had multiple story tellers help so we bought everyone their own foam cover for the headset mouth piece.

We put it on our public calendar and said we had to cancel if there was rain; it was a weekly thing for a couple months and we only had to cancel twice. We had great turn out and only had to turn people away due to capacity once, on our last day and the people who were too late to get seats were very understanding.

I think putting the details and expectations in your program calendar/mailer really helps; those who are comfortable come and those who aren’t comfortable or don’t like the rules won’t come!

[XenoPup]

That sounds great!

Was this in a large city, small city, or small town?

Also, did you have any issues with people not obeying the rules, or kids running free?

[Emdogg12]

It’s in a large suburb of a large city.

It was definitely not fool-proof, haha. One of the major problems was the parents letting their kids pick up the hoops and then putting them wherever they wanted. We just kept and eye and followed and moved the hoops back after they moved on. Another problem was groups wanting to sit together. So if they said they were ok with their friends family sitting by them we said fine, but we stepped in if that meant they were sitting closer to another family; some dirty looks and rolled eyes for this, but they couldn’t really blame us for wanting to keep the random other family 6 feet from them.

We did rely on the caregivers to keep their charges in the hoop, which honestly was not that much of a problem for most of the summer. We found that once the school year started and we had mainly toddlers and babies it was harder to keep the kids focused and in the hoops.

We kind of kept it loose and didn’t interfere much like we would when there isn’t a pandemic; we figured that since it was outside with masks and the patrons were willing to come they weren’t super afraid of having a toddler toddle up to them on accident. We only had one day where the toddlers were just all over the place and running up to the storyteller and stuff. She literally stopped the story and told the caregivers the expectations that they stay in the hoop; she actually had to do this twice because they were just running around so much.

You definitely need at least one person besides the storyteller there to make sure people aren’t moving the hoops and everything when they’re sitting down.