Check It Out 

• Benjamin Wood

The Salt Lake City Public Library system is back up and running after a long year of closures and curbside services. In an interview with City Weekly, Glendale Library branch manager Brooke Young describes how these important community resources are getting back to the old way of doing things but will keep some new tricks they've learned during the coronavirus pandemic. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Benjamin Wood: When did the Glendale branch reopen?
Brooke Young: We did a trial run in late August/September of 2020 but then [COVID-19] cases got really high again, so we shut back down. We officially opened back up on March 15, [2021], which is exactly a year from when we closed.

Are you back to full service?
There are still some things that we're not quite doing. You can't rent a study room. We still have a cap on the number of people in the building. And our hours aren't fully expanded—we're still closing a couple hours early. But almost all services are back up and running.

What's different now?
Because this branch is within walking distance of five schools, we really served kids and middle-schoolers. With kids and middle-schoolers not back at school full time, it's definitely felt a little empty.

Probably a little quieter?
A lot quieter. And because of that—our branch is geared to do after-school programing—we have all of the staff that is ready and able to do work that we're just not doing right now.

Will those programs start back up in the fall?
That is our hope and our plan.

Libraries had been going through an evolution in recent years. Has the pandemic changed the direction of those trends?
I think it's two-fold. One thing that the pandemic has really shown me is how much people do rely on us for traditional services. The thing that we heard over and over and over again is, 'I miss browsing for books. I miss getting movies and DVDs, and I miss going to the library,' which is really heartening. And especially for this building, the thing that people love is that it's a community space—a place to meet and have rooms for community groups. I think people do really miss that.

But what we've added is a lot of digital stuff, and we're doing digital programming. That has really shown us how big our reach could be. I was talking to someone at the Main Library, and they do an LGBTQ program for teens. With online programs, they are getting people from Utah County and places where they just don't have that. They're reaching a whole other community that needed that programming. So, we have to really think about what we want to do in terms of offering programming in person but still keeping a robust online presence as well.

What would you want people to know about the library system post-pandemic?
Especially in this community, which doesn't necessarily have computer access or internet access, and they're not following the library's Facebook page or following our social media, [the question becomes] how are we letting people know that we're open again? That's been really tough.

Right, because for so long, the library was just always open. That's what the library is.
Exactly. There have been a lot of patrons that we haven't seen back yet—especially older patrons, patrons who don't have kids in schools. How do we reach them and let them know we're back open?

How are you planning to approach that?
We're trying really hard. We're doing door-hanger campaigns to let people know about certain programs, like our Digital Navigator program and our career online high school stuff. We're trying to go to the neighborhoods to let people know about it. And I think that with word-of-mouth, it will hopefully get to everybody eventually.

How did the pandemic impact the volume of materials being checked out?
We're probably at maybe one-third of what we'd be normally. It's slowly getting back. And it really depends on the location. A location on our east side, like the Anderson-Foothill Branch, does an insane amount of check-out and check-in. That is what they do. Here in Glendale, what we do is more focused on being that community space and letting people use our wi-fi. The books are sort of secondary.

We have definitely seen, over the pandemic, that our online and digital library went through the roof. We had a lot of people get library cards just so they could access our digital library during the pandemic.

Any last thoughts for readers?
The books are all brand new. They haven't been touched and our shelves are full, come check them all out. We need people to take them home.