Books and magazines can have hundreds of pages. If they are checked out of the library, held and read for hours at a time, when they are returned do all the pages need to be cleaned?
That’s the kind of minutiae the staff of the Island Free Library has to think about as they prepare to slowly open up to an increase of library services, if not necessarily opening the building itself.
The Island Free Library’s Board of Trustees met online on Tuesday, May 19, to begin to hash out some of these details.
For instance, there are five publicly-used computers in the library’s front room. With 300 square feet of space needed for each patron, according to regulations put in place by the state, Baumann said the staff needed to figure out where the computers can be moved to.
“The way the public computers are configured it would be difficult to practice social distancing,” said Trustee Tom Doyle.
“We can move a lot of those computers around,” said Baumann. “We have a lot of ports in the library, some upstairs and downstairs.”
“That’s wonderful,” said Doyle.
But then Baumann said, “The difficulty is disinfecting and keeping them
