On Becoming a Victim of Your Own Success

We're having two completely different programming problems, but each problem has a silver lining.

Our first problem is with our family holiday programs. Our usual procedure for these programs was to have open registrations and turn no one away. In the past, we would get 100 sign-ups and have only 50 people show up. However, now we are having the opposite problem. We have 50 people sign up and 100 or more pack into our meeting room. We think the capacity of the room is supposed to be 150, but we have so many tables in there with storage of Book Sale books, plus Homework Help Center computers, so that knocks down the official capacity somewhat. For Halloween, we had 125 people clamoring for snacks, stories, and a craft. Our most recent Valentine's Day program drew 75.

And you never know if the families you get are going to be well-behaved or if they will run amok and ruin it for everyone. We have had families complain that we let too many people in and that people who register are not given a preference.

What are we doing to address these issues? Well, the first thing we are trying is to have several programs at different times. For instance, our final Summer Reading program last year was way too crowded and we had to limit it to one parent per child. So, this year we're going to do two Children's programs on a Saturday afternoon back to back. We have tickets for these, so families will pick which show they want to attend when the kids finish their reading, and when we run out of one set of tickets we will just give away the others. Halloween will be split as well, but there will be no tickets for that program. Last year we discovered that many teens wanted to come to a Halloween party, but we were not really programming for them. This year we will have a program for the teens separate from the Children's program. We hope this will solve some of our crowding issues on that holiday.

For the other holidays, the jury is still out. We may have to resort to some sort of ticket for all programs. Many libraries do this. Either you hand out tickets at the door and it's first come first serve (limiting tickets to the number the room will hold), or you have the registered families pick up tickets first and any other families that are in the library can take the remaining tickets at the door. Neither one is a perfect solution, and I think it will take some time and effort to get our patrons used to a new system. We'll see what happens with our upcoming Mardi Gras program and how splitting the final Summer Reading program works before we change anything else.

Our other success problem is actually my baby, Music Makers. We've noticed in the past year or so that our pool of toddlers and preschoolers is dwindling. Already they were split between the morning Preschool and Toddler Times and the evening Preschool and Storytimes, so the classes were small. Then, when I added Music Makers, everyone switched to that class. Toddler and Preschool Time were each happy to have about 20 people at any given session. Now they are happy to get 10 and Music Makers consistently hits 30. It's pretty amazing, actually, and I'm really proud to see my program take off. Even though I'm not planning or performing the program anymore, my replacement has kept the same format and songs and everyone loves the active participation.

Our plan to "fix" this problem is basically to combine the Toddler and Preschool storytime sessions on Thursday nights and offer a special themed program instead of a traditional session. For the summer, it will be a Camp Storytime complete with sleeping bags, flashlights, and campfire stories. In the fall, it will be Starlight Express, a program that celebrates bedtime stories and the end of the day. I'm hoping the novelty of these programs as well as the combined star power of my two master storytellers (everyone comes in and asks for Mrs. J and Miss Sophie from Toddler and Preschool Time) will get our numbers up without taking away from Music Makers.

If that doesn't work, there's still hope. We have a HUGE Baby Time right now, and at least some of those kids will have to turn 2 soon. :)