Churchill County Library to welcome visitors at Open House

After watching the pandemic limit the library’s services for the past 15 months, Carol Lloyd is happy to see people walking through the doors again.

With the state fully reopening last month, story time coming back this month and the heat waves, Churchill County Library is starting to return to its pre-pandemic number of visitors.

“They’re packed. It’s really gratifying to have people back in the library and using our services,” said Lloyd, the library’s director, who added the library was appointment only, and staff would deliver books to its customers before reopening. “It was nice having people back in the building. It was really nice. We hope that we can maintain it.”

Lloyd hopes to see more come by this week during the library’s open house. The Churchill Library Foundation is hosting an open house on Thursday from 6-8 p.m. at the Churchill County Library on South Main Street.

While not a fundraiser, Lloyd said the open house is an opportunity for the library to give back to the community and let everyone know that the library is open for business. In the short time since welcoming visitors back, Lloyd has been pleased with the results. It doesn’t hurt that the heat wave has sent people to the library.

“We have more and more people using the computers,” she said. “Because of the heat, we’re a place you can come and spend the day. We don’t care how long people stay as long as they’re following the rules. A lot of people are using our Wi-Fi.”

Although the library is still getting back to normal, Lloyd said the pandemic prompted her staff to look at its procedures and policies by capitalizing on the opportunity to enhance the visitor’s experience. Her staff is currently at six but Lloyd said they’re in the process of hiring two more.

“We had an opportunity to hit the reset button. We’re trying to be positive when it could be not,” she said. “We’ve got a great staff here. They really like libraries and care what we do. It’s nice.”

Downloadable content, which included e-books and streaming video, saw an increase since the onset of the pandemic. As long as you have a library card, the content is available. The summer program, in a scaled-back fashion, is also back.

“We know we have people who use the library and we don’t see,” Lloyd said. “We certainly have seen an increase and we expect that to stay. Just having people in the building is nice. I’m seeing people I haven’t seen in a year and a half. Before we closed, our average people in the day door each day was well over 400. It’s nice to see people coming back in and they’re comfortable and feel safe doing it.”