March 17, 2020
To: The Williamsburg and Iowa County Community and other users of the Williamsburg Public Library.
From: Randall Schroeder, director
Williamsburg Public Library
As you know by now, the Williamsburg Public Library building and its community/meetings rooms are closed and unavailable to the public until further notice.
In the meantime, library staff will be in the building Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. to take your phone calls, emails, and Facebook messages. There will be two librarians from 10-2 p.m. and two different librarians from 2-6 p.m. We will practice good social separation by remaining six feet apart.
What I am proposing for the moment is a “drive up” library. Starting tomorrow, Wednesday, March 18, 2020, you can contact us by phone, (319) 668-1195, or email (rschroeder@williamsburgiowa.org , pjosue@williamsburgiowa.org, sanderson@williamsburgiowa.org , or aegley@williamsburgiowa.org ) or post a message on our Facebook page. Tell us which materials you would like checked out. We will check out the materials to your name, place them in a bag with a label, and leave them outside our front door at a time of your choosing. If the weather is bad, we will leave them in the front door of our entryway, but we ask that only one person be in the entryway at one time.
If you have access to the internet, you can check availability of materials by going to our online catalog at https://www.williamsburg.lib.ia.us/ and clicking on “library catalog” at the top of the page: second link from left on bookmark bar.
You may return your materials in one of the library drop boxes. During the day, we will try to keep the entryway open, which has an additional third drop box if the two outside boxes are full.
During these extraordinary times, I have decided that we do not need any additional stresses in our lives with overdue fines. You do not need to return materials until you are finished with them or we call and ask for them back. We will only contact you if somebody else wants that item. Please do not venture out or return materials if you are sick.
To that end: I ask, as a community, that we do not check out more materials than you need for the moment, especially children’s books. If everybody checks out 25 books at a time, some will go without. As a guideline, which is NOT a policy, I would suggest checking out no more than five books, adult or children items at a time, and no more than two games or puzzles.
If the state or federal government declares a “shelter in place,” this program could end with no notice. In addition, if at any point I feel that this program will place any of the library staff in peril of getting sick, I will also end the program.
The staff and Board of Trustees of the Williamsburg Public Library wishes everybody good health, common sense, and good spirits. We will get through this because we are a community.
Randall Schroeder
