We often have people complain about our hours here at the library, even though we feel we have a pretty substantial time period each day when we are open to the public. On most days of the week, we open at 2:30pm and stay open until 9:00pm at night. This should cover most of the people that are home during the day, once kids finish school and then those people that work during the day who can visit us in the evening. On Fridays, we have slightly different hours, being open from 9:30am right through until 5:30pm. This accommodates all of those mothers who might be looking for something to do with their little ones in the morning, as well as people who might only be able to get here during a lunch hour. And of course, we are open for most of Saturday, from 10am until 5pm.
Now, what is wrong with those hours you might ask? Some people think they are wonderful, covering all the bases. In comparison to some other libraries, they can be quite good. But you can’t please everyone all the time, right? Many people feel we should be open earlier in the day and on Sundays, and as they will tell us, “the _____ library has much better hours. Why don’t you have the same hours?”
Now, what a lot of people don’t realize is that, even though we might not be open to the public, many of the staff are here working in the library. Most of us start the day at 9am, working until lunch, and then we are back again at 1:00pm to work until 5:30pm. We have two shifts, with the second group coming in at 1:00pm and working until 9:00pm. This allows the library to be open as long as we are. While we are here and not open to the public, we are working on preparing the books to go out…cataloguing, covering, preparing for storytimes, organizing events, and so many other duties we must carry out on a regular basis to keep the library running smoothly so that we have plenty of books to go out.
I was thinking about all of this when I was shopping in town this morning….and both stores that I needed to visit were not open until 10am….and I was there shortly after 9am. It was a little frustrating, but when I thought about those people that complain to us here about library hours, I realized that those stores are probably closed for good reason, and that there is no reason that I can’t go back at a later time….without complaint.
