Trustees:        
Kathi Mitchell, Tilton, Chair, lifetime appointee   
Nancy Court, Northfield, lifetime appointee
Morris Boudreau, Northfield, lifetime appointee
Carol Carignan, Tilton, elected             
Tom Fulweiler, Northfield, elected
Stephanie Giovannucci - Treasurer                                    

Staff:              
Nicole Schulze, Library Director
Brittany Shanahan, Assistant Library Director & Head of Teen Services
Josianne Fitzgerald, Adult Services & Publicity Librarian
Kate Boucher, Lindsey Neilson, Children's Services
Sam Constant, Janel Flanagan, & Rebekah Mallory – Desk Clerks
Nancy Smart, Joshua Dumka, & Mike Murphy, Maintenance
Evan Smith, Library Page
Jennifer Davis, Former Library Director

This  was a challenging but hopeful year for the Hall Memorial Library. Jenna, the library’s beloved director who served for nearly ten years, made the difficult decision to step back from Hall Memorial and formally resign. Jenna led the search for a new library director and Nicole Schulze took the helm in mid-July. For much of the year, the library was open for limited hours, Monday through Friday, 12pm-6pm. Over the summer, the hours extended to Monday through Friday, 10am-6pm. With the library set to return to its pre-Covid hours in 2022, Jenna and then Nicole worked to re-build the staff to the level of a high functioning public library offering both in-person and virtual resources, services, and programs. This involved welcoming a number of new faces along with promoting Brittany, our long-serving Teen Librarian, to the well-deserved position of Assistant Library Director & Head of Teen Services.

With the extension of hours came a near full return of in-person services along with an increase in virtual services. Because of the unpredictability of the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting changed service expectations of our patrons, the library has continued to encourage mask-wearing in the building, we’ve required masks for indoor programs, we continue to offer curbside pick-up, and we have expanded our virtual services by offering virtual programs and adding hoopla - a new digital platform offering eBooks, eAudiobooks, streaming TV shows, movies, and music to our library cardholders. Perhaps our favorite and most popular virtual program in 2021 was our NaNoWriMo series (National Novel Writing Month), during which three local authors gave virtual presentations and writing workshops during the month of November. In addition, we have started to slowly reintroduce in-person programs. For example, with the cold weather we brought our weekly Storytime into the children’s room where there is plenty of space for children and caregivers to spread out. And in September, we welcomed back our faithful Nooners Book Club – a group of devoted readers who had not met in the library since pre-Covid times.

While patrons have slowly started to return to the building and others have decided to dive into our  remote resources, we’ve been steadily adding new, modern resources that will further root the library as the heart of our vibrant community. We were fortunate to be awarded two ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) grants in 2021 through the New Hampshire State Library and Institute for Museum and Library Services. The first grant was used to add STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art & math) kits to our circulating collection. Our community can now borrow items ranging from snowshoes to a watercolor kit to an animal tracking backpack, and so much more. With the second grant, we plan to create a new teen space in 2022, where we will house and host resources and programs that contribute to the mental wellness of our community’s young people.

With this return to many of our in-person services along with an expansion of virtual services, we began to look for more ways to spread the word about all of the amazing resources the Hall Memorial Library has to offer our community. We created a monthly e-newsletter that currently reaches 2000+ people. And we’ve begun the process of migrating to a brand new, professionally designed website – in 2022, we will launch the website as the community’s new virtual library branch. And, while we’d love for everyone in Northfield and Tilton to visit us in our beautiful and historic building, meet our friendly staff, attend an in-person program, sign-up for a library card - we also understand that just like everything else that’s at the touch of your fingertips these days, we need to meet you where you are. In the coming year, we’ll be updating many of our services to do just that. Challenging but hopeful, 2021 has been a year of recovery for the Hall Memorial Library; we fully expect 2022 to be a year of growth.

Statistics

  • 2,000+: The number of library cardholders who live in Northfield. (This number does not include the hundreds of children under 5 years old who do not yet qualify for a library card but are heavy library users).
  • 130: The combined number of virtual, outdoor, and in-person programs the Hall Memorial Library hosted in 2021
  • 2,187: The number of people who attended (virtually or in-person) programs hosted by Hall Memorial Library in 2021
  • 17,993: The number of physical books/DVDs/other materials that were checked out from Hall Memorial Library in 2021
  • 7,636: The number of eBooks, eAudiobooks, and eMagazines checked out via Hall Memorial Library’s digital platforms in 2021
  • 8,500: The estimated number of visitors to the library in 2021
  • 575: The number of free, non-circulating books that we helped to put into the hands of the youth of Northfield and Tilton through our partnership with the Raven Gael Blaisdell Foundation.
  • 2,284: The number of books, DVDs, and other materials added to the library’s physical collection via a combination of purchases and donations.