Librarian Lisa Kern

Lisa Kern

As I’m sure many of the other reports will say, not much happened in the library this year, at least on my part. We did a few curbside exchanges, and families took advantage of times to check out books by appointment. Joan Hutcheson, a dear senior citizen who reads a few books a week at least, has visited by appointment, several times giving us at least some check out history for the year (130 since quarantine!) but of course if you can’t open the library, you don’t end up with too much to report!

Obviously, the best time for College Church to check out books is on a Sunday morning when you’re here, and I’d like to believe that as you’re reading this, we will have been given permission to open the doors. But still there’s maintenance to be done, and Paul Murphy never missed a beat. Every Saturday Paul takes books off the shelf and improves the records we have about the content of each book, giving us a more accurate and searchable database—every single Saturday (except for the three months we were not allowed to be in there at all) and some Thursdays as well. He has handled and worked with almost every book at this writing! That’s over 10,000 titles! And Linda, his wife, often joins him on Saturdays to shelve the few books that get returned, and does other shelf clean up and organization. Though you will not notice their work when you finally get to visit the College Church Library again, please know that our foundations have been shored up, and we are ready to open the doors as soon as we’re given permission!