Last week marked the end of another successful Summer Reading Program here at the Hamilton Public Library – thank you to everyone who participated! While this still wasn’t a ‘normal’ Summer Reading Program, what with social distancing, mask guidelines, vaccination rate-checking, and all the other Covid-related obstacles, we still managed to at least improve on last year’s numbers at least!
Ninety kids, teens, and adults signed up to participate in the ‘reading’ part of the program. There, participation meant getting free books, free ice cream, and filling out BINGO cards to earn raffle tickets for prizes, all for simply reading books. Congratulations to all our winners!
Of course the other part, the ‘program’ part of the program, was another success! Despite our restrictions, and the terrible weather that seemed to last most summer long, we offered almost 40 programs that 1,200 people attended. Wait. That can’t be right. That means there were 30 people on average per event? That’s too many.. Hold on.
Ah, there it is. That ‘Thursdays on the Village Green’ series really threw off our numbers – in a good way! Each of those events saw an average of about 175 concert-goers per week, and just like they did two years ago, provided folks of all ages with a wonderful activity and concert experience right in the center of town, for free! We were happy to partner with This Is Hamilton and so many generous benefactors – too many to list here – for helping make these events happen!
While we did have a great turnout, there is still room for improvement. Our teen programs were least popular, which is usually the case even in non-Covid years. One of these years we’ll crack that code, but parents of teens, keep an eye on our social media pages for more events and activities to keep your teens busy not only in next summer’s program, but during the year as well!
Thank you all for reading, and for being a part of our Summer Reading Program. Hopefully next year we can do this without masks!
