Despite closures, Santa Clara County libraries remain connected to community

When asked about what she misses most about being in a library, Clare Varesio, the community librarian for the Cupertino branch of the Santa Clara County Library District, paused for a few moments.

“What I miss most about the library?” Varesio said. “The experiences I know our patrons are having when they are coming into the building — I miss that we are not able to provide that to them right now.”

Due to COVID-19, commonplace library experiences like children’s storytimes, senior social events or high school study sessions have been erased for the indefinite future.

“That has been one of the heartbreaking things for me, is knowing that our doors are closed,” Varesio said. “So many of our patrons — to varying degrees, we were their lifeline. We were their connection to other people in the community.”

Out of Santa Clara County’s eight library branches, Cupertino is the busiest with over 900,000 visitors and a circulation of 2.5 million items annually. Located in a majority-populated Asian community that Varesio said appreciates its library with “rabid support,” the library sometimes intentionally avoids heavily promoting events because it can’t handle the large crowd that would show up.

With libraries closed, storytimes, career sessions and circulation have become entirely virtual. But officials say the community’s engagement has remained the same, if not increased during quarantine.

E-book circulation more than doubled to 150,000 books a month from March to April. Demand for video services has also gone up. Typically, around 100 people would attend a children’s storytime program in person. With storytimes now streaming on the library’s website, the county is averaging more than 1,000 views for a single storytime over a one-week period. And a class on advice to start a business that drew around 40 on-location participants earlier this year had 180 virtual attendees last week. Patrons have also been tuning in from all over the world, from Washington state to Australia.

“What’s nice about doing these things virtually: If you live in Gilroy or Campbell, and it’s a program my librarians might be hosting, we have reach across these cities,” Varesio said. “You don’t have to drive to Cupertino to attend. You can be wherever you are.”  

Diane Roche, the county’s director of communications and marketing, said that the library district is in regular contact with the nine cities it serves. Roche called it a “collaborative process to be able to continue to offer library services, receive feedback from cities to understand what they would like to see.”

Roche said: “Almost overnight, our world flipped and we had some big advantages over other library systems.”

In January, the district had revamped its website that better promoted the digital resources it offers. Once libraries shut down, the district increased the number of copies of digital materials and featured online resources on the homepage. Patrons who qualify for a library card can also register online and be instantly approved for an e-card that gives them access to digital content.

“The level of participation, the level of interest, just the community appreciation has been overwhelming,” Roche said.

For Varesio, one silver lining has been how appreciative the community has been to the virtual services. Prior to the pandemic, she felt that online resources were often “falling on deaf ears.” Now, the community is utilizing services such as Headspace, a meditation app that partnered with the district’s library system to provide its services free of charge to patrons.

Varesio doesn’t yet know when she’ll be able to re-open her library to the community. But one thing is for certain: Even as in-person storytimes will eventually happen again, the streaming component — a rarity in the pre-pandemic world — will continue post COVID-19.

“The unexpected finding for us has been the community has really enjoyed being able to have events offered in this way,” Varesio said. “I’ve been telling my staff, ‘Get used to this. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon.’”