The CEO's Corner - Spring 2023
A sure sign spring has sprung at the library is that poetry is in the air! As a part of National Poetry Month (April), I’m thrilled that BPL is running our second year of Burlington Lyrics & Poetry Festival.
Burlington Lyrics & Poetry Festival is Burlington Public Library’s annual celebration of the spoken word. For our second year, we have an exciting schedule of in-person and virtual performances, workshops, and activities for all ages. If you haven’t yet had a chance to view our full lineup of events, check out our Burlington Lyrics & Poetry webpage.
Thank you, Burlington Business Community
We are honoured to be a finalist for this year’s Burlington Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Awards in the not-for-profit category. A warm congratulations to all our fellow nominees.
Each and every day our team strives to meet the needs and interests of our customers and our community. It’s wonderful to have that work recognized by the Burlington business community with this nomination.
More of what you are looking for from your Library
As we move further into 2023, we are hard at work making improvements based on the feedback you shared in our 2022 Customer Satisfaction Surveys.
It’s clear that BPL’s collections and borrowing remain the most important service we provide. While you love the opportunity to take home a wide variety of materials—from books to birding kits—you identified frustrating gaps with wait times, missing items, and lack of selection in some categories. At the end of 2022, we began a collections project to:
- create ‘missing lists’ of items that were listed in our catalogue but not on our shelves
- purchase new copies of items that had gone missing
- and fill gaps in series we carry.
We want to make sure our collection is accurately reflected in our catalogue and we are getting closer to that goal.
We are also looking for creative solutions to increase your access to material. Last month, we were delighted to add Kingston Frontenac Public Library to our growing More to Borrow partnership, which gives you access to e-Books from our five partner libraries. We also recently posted a how-to article about searching for books that are available to borrow immediately.
Several other themes emerged from our survey. Many of you are looking for more space for meetings, gatherings and private study and more availability in our popular programs that fill up quickly. We hear you. We are exploring solutions to improve in each of these areas, while acknowledging that our customers sometimes have competing needs and preferences.
Another clear theme from your feedback is that we need your help to spread the word! You mentioned low awareness of some of our services and resources. We recently updated our RESOURCES webpage to better highlight what we offer and are working on a similar upgrade to other parts of our website. We are also highlighting a featured resource in our branches and online each month. With so much information competing for public attention, we’d love your help to get our message out there.
- Word of mouth is a powerful tool. Thank you for continuing to talk about BPL and highlighting the ways you use your library with your friends, family, and social circle!
- Make sure you aren’t missing our emails! With recent changes to spam filters on popular email platforms (particularly Gmail), some customers are missing our holds ready notices and newsletters. If you want to ensure our communication makes it into your inbox, consider adding BPL as a contact, or moving our emails to your “Primary” folder.
- Follow along on social media! Make sure you are following @BurlOnLibrary on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. You can add us as a “Favourite” on Instagram to make sure you don’t miss our posts. Just click the “Following” button on our profile, then click “add to favourites.”
It’s important to us that we have open lines of communication with our customers. Thanks for staying in touch and stay tuned for our 2023 Customer Satisfaction Survey in June.
Lita
