On Tuesday, April 28, Governor Baker announced that the stay-at-home order would be in effect until May 18 and that the economy and public life would resume in phases after that. The Town is working on guidelines concerning how that opening is going to look and how business and service to our customers will be conducted. Unfortunately, regular service as we all knew it pre-Covid-19 is gone until there is an effective treatment and/or vaccine. The book drop at the library is now closed. Up until Tuesday, April 28, the book drop at the Richards Memorial Library had remained open for returns. As of Wednesday morning, all of the available delivery bins had been filled; there is no more room to take returns. If you have items to return to the library, please hold them until we open again. Thank you. Public library due dates will now be extended to June 18, 2020. If the non-essential business closures date is extended again, the due dates will continue to be extended to a month after the new date. School library due dates have already been updated to September 1. Pickup dates for available holds have been extended to May 28, 2020. The privilege expiration date for patron accounts will remain at July 1, 2020 for now. We will consider extending this date again if the closings last longer than May 18. If you have some special circumstance that affects your returning books after June 18, please call us. We all hope to see you soon and please stay safe.
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Starting Monday, April 27, the Richards Memorial Library is offering contactless “Library Front Porch Pickup” for residents of North Attleboro. Call the library (508-699-0122) from 10 a.m. to noon, Monday through Friday, with your book requests and your library card number. Please note: we can only provide items that are currently on our shelves. We are not pulling books from the holds list so call us to tell us what you would like. The holds list would still have books for other libraries and there is no delivery service now. Staff will check out the books to your account, bag them, put your name on them, and leave the bag on the front porch of the library for you to pick up by 1 pm that afternoon. All items will be due back on June 18. We recognize that a significant number of our patrons either do not have access to, or prefer not to use, electronic books and audios. And as fellow readers, we know how important it is to have access to good books. We hope this helps fill the gap until we can all safely enjoy the library together again.
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We will post on the website, Facebook and Instagram sites when we can begin to collect for our Fall Book Sale. Stay tuned.
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The Children's Department has been so very quiet. However, we have been working on new ways to present programs during this time of social distancing. Authors, illustrators and publishers work to produce the wonderful books and music we usually present during our story times. They, like most of us, should be and need to be paid for their work. Their work is protected by copyright laws which restrict the use of their work. One time "fair use" is fine at the library, but it gets complicated once "broadcasting, recording, filming," is considered. The Coronavirus has presented new issues for those in the publishing industry and those of us in libraries; it has taken a little time to work them out. With some restrictions, limited permissions have been given by many publishers to use books from their companies for virtual story times, which Meredith and Eunice will be presenting on the Fan Club Facebook Group, and on YouTube. We will also be telling old stories and new stories we make up in that quaint, old-fashioned way so as not to violate copyright laws. We will not have story times at the library until July at the earliest, so please, for now, join us on a screen in your living room. Let us know what you think. We miss you. The Summer Reading theme is Imagine Your Story. We will tell you in June about the Stained Glass Window project. Children will be designing projects like this: For all the caregivers of children struggling to provide what is best, please know that your being there and caring is what your kids want, need and will remember. Sharing family chores builds everyone's self esteem. Screen time is now part of their education. Quiet time is time for developing independence. Confidence will grow out of working out problems on their own. Mistakes teach great lessons. Staring at clouds and mud and bugs reveals interesting facts about the world. Be a partner in discovery when possible, but, remember, you are not the entertainment committee. The library hosted children's book tournaments on the Facebook page. The winners were Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown for Best Picture Book, Charlotte's Web by E.B. White for Best Children's Book, and Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling for Best Young Adult Series.
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The library has been posting tournaments of the best books and television shows on the Facebook page. Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum won Best Adult Book Series Character, and Downton Abbey won Best British Television Series. The Best North American Television Series tournament is underway. In May, we will begin the tournament for Best Broadway Show. To help select the 16 contestants, vote here by May 3. While all in-house programs are canceled, we are holding Book Discussions virtually using Google Hangouts/Meets (which is free.) For the May Book Discussion at 1:30 pm on Tuesday, May 12, the plan is for each participant to talk about a book that he/she has read recently and really liked. This is what we usually do in the summer at someone's house for a pot luck. The pot luck this time can be showing us a picture of a food or beverage that would go with the book. Imagine all the choices if you had read a Louise Penny! Email mholmes@sailsinc.org if you would like to participate and I will show you how the software works. I have been working on Armchair Travel for my blog -- rmlblog.wordpress.com -- to present some of the library's digital offerings that can take you outside of your house. The 1st in the series is the British Isles and the next is going to be Australia and New Zealand. Hope this inspires you. You can email me with suggestions as well.
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The library has launched an Instagram page for those patrons not on Facebook. Find us as Richards Memorial Library MA. Remember you can find our OverDrive/Libby, Hoopla, and RBDigital resources on our website.
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