Welcome to the ... Mallbrary?

One of the library branches in my sister's area received funding for an extensive remodeling project, and so it has been closed since last spring for renovations.  In order to keep the library open during the renovation period, they have opened a temporary location in a storefront in the local mall.  It functions like a mini version of the library, complete with a window display, a moderate selection of books, and a checkout station where the cash register would be.

They even have a small kid's section with a number of books and some computers, and I guess they still do a lot of children's programming.  They had a big summer reading program, and they do story times that take place in the mall, including a Pajama Tale story time that my sister was thinking of taking her little guy to.  One of the stores in the mall lets them use an open space area on the upper level for their story times and other events.  A quick look at their calendar of events shows that most events are youth services programming: bilingual story times, pajama story times, a young adult book club, and a preschool story time.  

I thought it was an interesting idea to open a temporary location in the mall, and it definitely has its advantages.  In terms of reaching a wider audience, surely you would get more foot traffic being in the middle of a mall.  You would definitely be able to reach out to a larger portion of the population that might not otherwise specifically visit the library.  In that sense, it is a great opportunity for community outreach and advertising the services of the library.  Since their events take place in an open space on the upper level, parents/caregivers walking by could see and be able to join in on a story time or other event with their child.  Still, it is pretty strange to read on an events calendar that a story time will take place "on the upper level near Kevin Jewelers"!

                                                  Photo credit: Crystal Chatham, The Desert Sun

Early Literacy Revisited/Storytime

This post relates back to the unit we did a couple weeks ago about young children.  My sister has a little guy who is about 1.5 years old.  She wanted to take him to one of the storytimes offered by one of her local libraries (she lives in California).  She checked on the website and there wasn't an advance registration option, so she showed up a few minutes early and the place was packed!  She and a couple other parents/caregivers were asked to leave because it was full.

I guess the way it works is that the parents/caregivers show up early with their little ones and wait in the hall until the librarian comes to open up the Children's Room a few minutes before the start of the program.  This particular program is capped at 25.  I guess they have had so much interest in a toddler storytime program that they have started adding additional storytimes weekday mornings in an effort to try to accommodate everyone.

This got me thinking about the group exercise we did in class where we created a plan for a storytime. One of the questions we talked about was whether to have advance registration as an option and allow for a couple drop-ins, or whether there would be a no-registration, first-come-first-served policy.  Any thoughts/experiences on the best way to do this?  I think my sister will probably try to go again in the next couple weeks and try to get there earlier, but if you don't have an advance registration option do you risk losing people who might not come back again if they are turned away once?