Director's Message
5/8/2020 • 3 years ago
The information on this page may be outdated as it was published 3 years ago.
Hello again, CPL community!
As May arrives, many are feeling the upswell of hope that comes with springtime! We've seen the showers, let's bring on the flowers!
The mention of flowers reminds me of yet one more loss resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The
Friends of the Cambridge Public Library have canceled their popular Secret Garden Tour for 2020. They are hopeful to be able to host it in 2021 instead. Many thanks to the Friends' Board, volunteers, and gardeners, who had already done quite a bit of work towards this effort.
In more positive news, it seems the CPL is gaining popularity for our virtual resources, services and programming!
-Over 900 Cambridge residents have become new Overdrive users in the past six months.
-This March, funds from the
Cambridge Public Library Foundation enabled us to increase
Hoopla checkouts from 3 to 15. March had 237 new
registered Hoopla users - from 108 new users in February.
-A record breaking 3479 checkouts occurred in March, up from 1730 the month before. Audiobooks remain the top checkouts, however, Hoopla's
eBook, TV Series and Comics collections are also experiencing increased usage.
-Since mid-March, 357 patrons signed up for
online Library cards- an average of about 8 per day.
-Our new reader advisory service,
Your Next Great Read, has received 162 patron recommendation requests since it began 2 weeks ago. Patrons
clicked through on 245 links to the MLN catalog from our recommendation emails.
-We are starting to receive patron questions via our new
Ask Us service.
-We've hosted 3
Virtual Family Story Times, averaging about 65-70 families actively participating in each.
-Our first
Passions & Pathways talk, where designers, scientists, engineers and business professionals share the stories and pathways to their careers,
had 37 participants, while we hosted 33 at our second session.
-Our
Bullet Journaling During the COVID-19 Pandemic webinar has registered an astonishing 1000+ views!
Registration is now open for The Hope Storytelling Project @ the Cambridge Public Library, a virtual series of 5 bi-weekly poetry workshops discussing the theme of hope. The workshops seek to help participants share their own stories through poetry, and to create community during this time of social isolation. This workshop is hosted and taught by Harvard students David Xiang and Alisha Yi. The deadline for registration is May 24th, 2020 at 11:59 pm.
Learn more here.
The Library is also virtually hosting Porsha Olayiwola presents i shimmer sometimes, too on Monday, May 18th, 7 pm - 8 pm EST. Olayiwola is a writer, performer, educator and curator who uses afro-futurism and surrealism to examine historical and current issues in the Black, woman, and queer diasporas. A Zoom link will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.
Registration is required.
Thank you all for your continued patronage at the Cambridge Public Library. Wishing you all the best for the week ahead!
Maria McCauley, Director of Libraries