DELHI TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Local libraries felt the impact of the COVID-19 with the rest of the world, and like other businesses, they had to change their practices to accommodate public health measures.
Throughout much of 2020 and 2021, the Capital Area District Libraries (CADL) were closed to the public, with materials only being accessible through curbside services. The service was quickly established following the stay-at-home order beginning in March of 2020.
Frequent library visitors also turned to the digital collection of resources offered by the libraries, which include services such as Hoopla and Libby, and encompass a wide range of media formats, including electronic books, audiobooks, TV shows, movies, and graphic novels.
While the libraries now welcome visitors back into their doors, new services provided in the wake of the pandemic are likely to stay, as they continue to be used by individuals seeking to continue social distancing.
The libraries also continue to expand their digital selections to accommodate the consumption of digital media, which has continued to increase despite relaxing pandemic restrictions.
Spartan Newsroom Reporter Aidan Binford spoke with Karon Walter, head librarian of the Holt-Delhi branch of the CADL, about the libraries changing services and how COVID-19 is impacting her job.
Interview Transcript
Karon Walter: My name is Karon Walter, I’m the Head Librarian here at the Holt-Delhi library branch, and essentially my job here is to make sure everything goes smoothly.
Aidan Binford: What were the adjustments that the library needed to make in order to adapt to the new environment?
Walter: So originally when it all started, we were shut down just like everybody else. We had a curbside service that we had been offering at specific larger branches due to staff, and so we were able to quickly come up with a curbside service that we felt would work for all of our branches with all of our staffing needs. So once we had that essentially as bug-free as we could make it as quickly as possible, we were able to release that. Then we had curbside service essentially for all of the rest of 2020, and I believe for parts of 2021.
We were open for a good portion of 2021 and we’ve currently been open for all of 2022 so far. But our biggest adjustment was going from having people come in every day and interacting with them to not having that. It was quite lonely in many ways here at the library branches without people and then when we did open back up, we did find that it was still kind of lonely because people were a little bit nervous to come in which is completely understandable.
But we are really happy that to see that at this point now here, in September 2022, we are getting a lot more people coming in. A lot more people are feeling comfortable to either wear masks or not, however they choose, but that they’re comfortable coming back into the library and checking materials out in person or attending our in-person programming.
We do still offer curbside service especially for people who just don’t feel comfortable coming in or just prefer that service, we still have it and we still use it.
Binford: Has the library returned to its pre-COVID turnout?
Walter: Yeah, so I would say we’re probably over fifty percent of what we were, so currently I would say we’re probably close to seventy percent of what we were pre-quarantine numbers for people coming in.
Binford: Do you feel like the online services that you guys provide now, makes up the remaining thirty percent that don’t show up again or is it a different crowd that seems to be attracted to the online services?
Walter: I think it’s a little bit different of a crowd. We’ve always had a digital collection that you could access online from anywhere you had internet access, and I think that a lot of our people actually found that (service) more so over the quarantine cause we were closed and so that was the only way they could access materials through us.
We have things like Kanopy, and Hoopla or Libby, and those types of things were very easy to access from home so we have noticed a large uptick in people using those when COVID came and the quarantine hit, but we’ve also noticed that number’s staying strong, it’s not going down by any strong percentage .I think those people are just realizing they can access those things a little bit easier and a little bit quicker from home, instead of having to come in and check our shelves to see if we have the book or if a different branch has the book they’re looking for.
So I think that’s where a lot of our people had kind of gone, but I do see that there is more of a generational thing, a lot the older people seem to be more comfortable coming into the library and a lot of the families feel more comfortable coming into the library, but we don’t see as many of that middle-age range of folks.
I think that also might be because they found the online resources, the books, the e-books, the e-audiobooks; we pretty much have everything. We have graphic novels, we have TV shows, we have movies, so there’s a large variety of what you can access through our online options.
So I think that that’s where most of those people who are a little bit more maybe tech-literate or maybe they like tech a little bit more, then they kind of went to that route.