The St. Albert Public Library saw a 38-per-cent increase in overall digital use during 2020, according to their recently released annual community report.
As COVID-19 pandemic safety measures were instated across the province, the library saw a 30- to 40-per-cent increase in eBook use across multiple platforms, as well as attendance of new online programming. In 2020, the library offered 570 programs that were attended by 23,153 people.
The library also launched a curbside pickup service for a period of 21 days in June of 2020, ending when library doors reopened on July 2. As the curbside pickup was in operation, the library saw hundreds of St. Albertans borrow thousands of items, the report said.
Peter Bailey, the chief executive officer of the library, said the feedback the library received from patrons over the past year was very enthusiastic.
“Our patrons are smart, and they were able to figure it out. It was quite successful,” Bailey said of the library’s pivot to online services and curbside pickup.
Bailey argued the library’s response to the pandemic can be attributed to its “amazing and marvellous” staff.
“We have the best staff in the world,” Bailey said. “They were so great at doing things differently and in an innovative way.”
He said that 11 days after the library first closed in March of 2020 it opened its first digital programs with Zoom and Facebook Live.
“We’ve come to take [video conferencing platforms] for granted, but at the time they were quite new to us,” Bailey said. “We thought ‘are little kids going to come to a story time and understand what’s going on when the person is on a screen?’ But it worked, and our staff are really good at it.”
New location a hub
When the library operated curbside pickup, they did so out of their new Jensen Lakes Library location, which first opened its doors in January of 2020.
The location came in handy during the pandemic due to restrictions at St. Albert Place, which meant the library's access to the building was “very limited,” Bailey said.
Despite patron participation in the library’s online pivot, Bailey said staff are “very happy to be back” in person.
“Programming has been a key aspect of this library over the last 10 years,” Bailey said. “Let’s say you’re at a ‘how to garden’ program, and you have a question about something, and you start chatting with the person beside you. People start conversations in those workshops and learn from each other, and that’s very hard to reproduce online.”
While the library is back to outdoor, in-person programming, it is looking to wait until September to launch programming indoors, beginning with children’s story times.
Now that restrictions have been lifted, Bailey said digital use of the library has levelled off to around 10 per cent of overall circulation.
“I always say [the library is] more about the things we do than the things we have, but the pandemic has shown us that we are still about the things that we have, too,” Bailey said. “The book is still an amazing technology, and still valued by local folks.”
