SAUGUS — Library Director Alan Thibeault spoke on the successful summer the library had at the last Board of Trustees meeting.
One success was seeing kids participate in the Reading Dragons program and level up their reading skills while off from school.
“It proved to be a very popular program,” Thibeault said. “This year we had a total of 401 children take part in the program, which wasn’t a record setter for us. We’ve been over 5(00) before, but they did read an aggregate 4,628 hours, which did set a record.”
The hope for the program was to help kids not lose the skills they gained over the school year, with the library noting that “reading plays a vital role in helping reduce the ‘summer slide’ — learning loss experienced between school years, which can leave students significantly behind their peers.”
The teen and adult programs had six people participating in each.
Thibeault said the Summer Concerts at the Iron Works was also a successful program once again.
“We had a lot of more people this year. We averaged 129 per show in 2024. This year we averaged nearly 183… It was a really good job by the (National) Park Service and the bands that we brought in. We had a lot of very enthusiastic people,” he said. “It’s really nice to see everybody getting together.”
Thibeault also pointed out a new upgrade the library received in September, which was new lights in the Community Room.
“If you’ll look up, you’ll notice it’s a bit brighter in here,” he said. “…We basically matched the same lighting that’s over in the Reading Room on the other side.”
Board Chair Michael Sullivan noted that he liked the change.
Thibeault said, “We did this job pretty quickly. The work became available to us I’d say in September. We got it done quickly. It was a grand total of $1,864 done by Thomas Minniear of Saugus. They did a great job.”
He said they’ll be looking to get more feedback as people use the room to ensure it isn’t too bright.
“Sometimes these LEDs are (too bright), and they can step it down a little bit so it wouldn’t be quiet as intense,” he said.
The Board unanimously approved the one-time expenditure of $1,864 for the work coming from state aid.
“I think it looks good, and you’re doing a good job about parsing out the state-aid money to take care of stuff that has to be done,” Sullivan said.
