Since she was hired in July 2014, Deep River Children’s Librarian Elaine Alexander—more commonly known as Miss Elaine—has been working 12 hours a week to make the library an exciting place for local children, but her schedule isn’t enough to accomplish everything she—and the library—would like. In response, the library is seeking additional town funding to add five hours a week to Alexander’s schedule.

The library will present its request to the Deep River Board of Finance at its Tuesday, Oct. 27 meeting.

“Libraries are the hub of the community, especially in these small towns,” said Alexander, who said the extra hours will allow her to offer more programs.

“Prior to me coming on board here, the library was without a children’s librarian for about six months and so I had to start from scratch again to build up the programs. Circulation went from stagnant to very active,” said Alexander. “It’s important to have a position here that offers growth so people want to stay and the library is not on a constant roller coaster of staff.”

Currently the library only has one full-time staff member, so everyone is constantly wearing a multitude of hats to keep the library machine moving forward.

“We are not asking for a lot, just a few more hours so I can continue to work on the programs I have started and have time to plan and research new programs to offer,” said Alexander.

The children’s librarian currently spends a portion of her 12-hour work week at the circulation desk, as well as updating social media for the library and creating and sending out press releases. Alexander also works part-time at another library in Connecticut and is a published author of teen mystery books. Her hope is that the ultimately her position at the Deep River Library will one day become full-time.

“Typically I spend about six hours a week at circulation, so that limits the programs and services I can do,” said Alexander.

In her 12 hours, she also visits the CDE Cooperative Nursery School on a monthly basis as part of the library’s programs and puts together two back-to-back story hours on Fridays, as well as the summer reading program and ongoing youth and family programs, which are very well attended.

“This is a wonderful community to be working in, everyone is always so grateful and I am glad that I am helping to get people back into the library exploring new programs and using the books and programs they are interested in,” said Alexander. “We even have residents from other nearby communities coming to our programs,which is great, especially for the children, many of whom meet their first friends at the library before they start school or preschool. Libraries are still very important parts of the small town communities and I want to make the Deep River Library even better, but I need more hours to be able to do that.”