NASHUA – With its hours adjusted and a new calendar of events ready just in time for fall, the Nashua Public Library has unveiled some fresh programs and a few favorites for library lovers who have missed going there during these past few months.

Outreach and marketing librarian Carol Luers Eyman said the library is open for business and visitors may enter the building, provided they are wearing masks and observe proper physical distancing.

“People can come in and browse our displays,” she said. “They are able to use our computers by appointment, and they may get assistance from our reference librarians. What they are not able to do right now is browse in the stacks and choose books themselves. They have to select them from the display.”

A recent survey of their NPL customers in the past few weeks asked what services library-goers like to see, and overwhelmingly, it was for folks to be able to browse the stacks of books themselves. But with COVID-19, the library is doing its best to minimize surfaces that visitors physically touch or handle.

“People don’t want to have to say, ‘I want this book, I want that book,'” Eyman said. “They want to discover and browse books on their own.”

Eyman said that when books are returned, they are “quarantined” for four days, so the staff is trying to follow hygiene practices in that sense. Preventing traffic in the aisles is another thing that staffers are trying to avoid, while they are trying to reshelve books or while people are looking at titles.

“We’re also short-staffed right now,” she shared.

“We have about five vacant positions. We also had to furlough all of our part-time pages a couple of months ago. But we did get permission to fill two of our full-time positions, so we need to do that before we can open the stacks.

The NPL also wants to wait a few weeks to assess how things unfold as schools continue their first couple of months.

“I know they’re open remotely right now,” Eyman said. “But as students do come back into the classrooms, we want to keep an eye on the numbers and ensure we don’t have a big outbreak of COVID cases before we introduce more liberal policies.”

With students back in school, the library will offer remote learning support. Eyman said students, teachers and parents can visit the NPL website, www.nashualibrary.org, where they have posted some tutorial videos.

“We have downloadable books and downloadable audio books,” she stated. “We have videos that can be screened as well, as sometimes teachers will assign a film or something like that for students to watch. They are available on our website with a library card.”

There are e-courses online as well; links are also available for older students, explaining how to read newspaper archives.

For entertainment, the library has “take and make crafts” for children and teens.

“We make up packets of all the supplies you’ll need for a certain craft,” Eyman explained. “You can either come into the library on a certain day, or on certain days, and pick them up, or you can get them through curbside pick-up.”

For some of the crafts, a video or instructions for that craft will be posted on the library website. Other times, the instructions will be enclosed with the craft packet.

Eyman said for adult classes, visitors can pickup the materials, and there will be a class this month, Sept. 18, where crafters can participate in a live Zoom event, live with the class teacher.

As for who’s going in and who’s staying out, Eyman said the numbers are close but not quite equal.

“About 60% of our business is people coming in,” she said. “And 40% is curbside. I think we have set a limit of 23 people in the library coming in at a time. Space is somewhat restricted and we want to keep people a safe distance from one another, but that hasn’t been an issue.”

One new attraction is virtual escape rooms, which the library is featuring this year.

“There is a website called ‘www.breakout.edu,'” Eyman said, “and our youth service librarians have gone in and created puzzles with a theme. And then people can go in, it’s all online, and you do these puzzles, and through each step of the way, they get closer to ‘escaping’ from the room they’re stuck in. The fun thing about that is we’re also able to create an escape room based on a teacher’s lesson that they’re doing.”

As the library has been a “home” for some folks who have living situation insecurities, Eyman said there has been a slight uptick in seeing those folks but due to health reasons, there is no seating in the library at this time.

“People can’t sit down and read a book,” she said. “You come in and print or fax something, or pick out a book, but there’s not a lot to keep you there for a prolonged period of time.”

Eyman said that as the library looks at services they can offer, meeting rooms are still unavailable.

“We can’t do them right away,” she said. “We’re going to look at them again at the end of the year. The concern right now is having people meeting in groups. And we’ve also had to space out our staff so we’ve had to turn some of our meeting rooms into staff offices for now.”

Generally speaking, there is a lot of support in the state and nationally for places like libraries and museums, according to Eyman.

“There is guidance,” she said. “But this is new territory for all of us.”

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