City Librarian Community Message

June 2, 2020

Dear Friends,

Decatur Public Library is pleased to announce the beginning of Curbside Pickup and the 2020 Summer Reading Challenge.

Curbside service began yesterday, Monday, June 1. This means you can place holds/requests for physical items held at our library and we will arrange a time for you to pick the items up in our parking lot without ever leaving your car. We are hoping that this will be a service we can continue even after the library is open to the public. Please see more details here: Curbside Information

2020 Summer Reading Challenge is underway. Our first ever all online Summer Reading Program. The response thus far has been terrific. We opened it up last week and have had 420 signups already. We have set a goal for a total community reading time of 1 million minutes this summer. The Summer Reading Challenge will help kids retain important skills over the summer, but it is not just for kids. Decatur Public Library has reading challenges for young adults and grown-ups as well. You can find all the details here: Summer Reading Challenge 2020

We want to thank the Friends of the Decatur Public Library, Monical’s Pizza, Papa Murphy’s and Wendy’s for their support of the Summer Reading Challenge AND Dr. Richard Lockmiller for his continued support. While Decatur Public Library usually reaches out to local businesses for additional sponsorships in the form of donated gifts to the library, this year we decided to purchase our gifts in order to give back to our local businesses and organizations in these economically distressed times. We hope you too will spend some of your hard-earned money at these local businesses that have given the library such generous support over the years:

Avon

Novel Ideas

Coney McKane's

Giggles

Sloan's Calzones

Jimmy Johns

Children's Museum of IL

Decatur Area Arts Council

DISC (Decatur Indoor Sports Center)

Decatur Public Library is also hoping to have its doors open soon. Our target is late June and we are working to develop a plan to make that happen. There are a lot of ducks for us to get in a row—but I’m confident that we will be able to do this in a way that is safe for patrons and staff. Expect limited hours and limited services at first, but also expect those hours and services to expand fairly quickly. We miss our patrons, we miss serving our community—and we are working to ensure that we do this the right way.

Please keep in mind that phased re-opening of the library will only occur when DPL administration and Board of Trustees, in conjunction with City of Decatur and Macon County Health officials, deem it safe to do so. The health of DPL users and staff will take precedence in all cases.

Thank you for remaining loyal DPL users—

Sincerely

Rick Meyer

City Librarian

Decatur Public Library