Library Director Alan Thibeault said coronavirus restrictions have forced the library to rethink multi-year plans for improving the Central Street building and serving patrons.
“It’s all been blown out of the water,” said Thibeault in describing how the pandemic upended the library’s five-year strategic plan.
Crafted over two years and unanimously approved by the library Board of Trustees last September, the plan encompasses improvement goals for the 22-year-old library and ways to make the most of the 100,000 annual patron visits to the building.
Thibeault hoped eliminating the library’s annoying sound characteristics would be among the plan’s first projects.
“It’s like an echo chamber,” he said.
But a plan to reach out to experts specializing in building sound-deadening methods got shelved when coronavirus closed down public buildings and forced libraries to scramble and shift services to online resources.
In addition to offering a variety of online or “virtual” classes and activities, the library started front door service a month ago with plans to expand beyond providing patrons with books and other library services.
“We want to continue to add more, including online printing,” Thibeault said.
In the meantime, coronavirus means reprioritizing strategic plan elements originally scheduled to unfold in 2021 and over the next four years.
Plan priorities included offering a “well-maintained, accessible, and up-to-date interior” as well as improving safety and accessibility and providing “education and enrichment opportunities for all generations.”
That planning process, said Thibeault, including looking at how efficiently space inside the 16,500 square foot library is used. A career librarian, Thibeault said Saugus’ library is fairly small compared to library buildings in similar size communities, meaning efficient space use has to be a priority.
But with coronavirus keeping people out of the library, planning has to focus on marketing and making people aware of services they can access, ranging from front door pickup to virtual programming.
“It’s much more relevant,” he said.
How people are served has become the multi-year plan’s new priority and space use and other building-related projects will go, Thibeault said, to the plan’s back end — for now.
“We’ll try to push forward as much as we can,” he said.
