What do people in Harvard do to prepare for a major winter storm? Well, they stock up on bread and milk. They fill their gas cans. They get out their shovels. And, in large numbers, they head to the Harvard Public Library.
On Monday, Jan. 26, before winter storm Juno hit town, library patrons checked out 1,319 items: 833 books, 396 DVDs, 77 audiobooks, and 13 magazines. (These figures include only items borrowed at the circulation desk, not the e-books and other electronic materials that people can check out from their home computers.)
At the same time, people conscientiously returned hundreds of items they had borrowed earlier. Library staff members emptied the drop box repeatedly and were very busy processing the incoming and outgoing materials, according to Library Director Mary Wilson.
With the Groundhog Day storm that hit the following Monday when many of the DVDs were due, library users got another day—free of charge—to watch all those movies they had checked out.
And then the whole sequence of events repeated last weekend, with schools and the library closed Monday, Feb. 9. All in all, a lot of pages read and movies watched while winter ruled outdoors.
