Hello, Jackson County. Wally did a great job taking over my usual Tuesday slot for Veterans Day, and here we are, Thursday, November 12. So, what’d I miss? Murder Hornets? Election news? What’s that? Increasing COVID cases in Jackson County? Oh, 2020, we can always trust you to throw continued monkey wrenches into the library services engine… and of all those things, it’s the COVID cases that are really going to slow library services down.

Last week Governor Brown announced that Jackson County would go on a reopening “pause.” In response to this, the library has revised the services it is offering in the coming weeks. All Jackson County Library locations have returned to a front door service model. This means circulating library materials will be available at the front door only via our holds system and that nobody will be able to enter the library to browse. When we provided front door service earlier in the year, we received feedback from our loyal book browsers that this made it really difficult for them to find materials they wanted to check out.

In response to this, we are providing a tool designed especially for our browsers of ALL ages. Just fill out this form and we’ll send you a personally curated list of materials that are available in the library. When you receive your list, all you need to do is place holds on the items that sound good to you. In an ideal world, once you’ve placed your hold requests, these items will be available for you to pick up in a day or two. If you would prefer, it is also possible to come to the library. One person at a time can enter the library for personal reference or reader’s advisory services. You still won’t be able to browse, but we should be able to facilitate getting some library materials for you to check out.

Here’s an example of what one of our curated book lists might look like  NOTE: this is basically a list of books that I personally loved and read this year as an example only, and not all of them are currently available in the system. Feel free to test your hold-placing prowess with this list if you would like.

You will need to have your library card registered on our website to use this service. That’s easy to do from here if you haven’t already.

We look forward to providing this new service to you. Be well and stay safe!