GALION — Although patrons cannot physically go inside Galion Public Library, they can still enjoy the benefits of being a library card holder with curbside pickup being offered.

Heather Tiffany, who is the childrens librarian, said they don’t know when the library will be allowed to open its doors to the public, but pointed out curbside pickup is a great alternative for people to get resources from the library.

“We started doing curbside service on Monday,” she said. “Monday through Saturday from 1-5 p.m. we are offering curbside pickup. There is an app — the Cool Libraries app — to use to request materials to check out, or they can call us at 419-468-3203. People can request specific items … or like on Monday I had someone say they had a four-year-old and a six-year-old and asked me to pick out 10 books for them.”

Just like service at area restaurants, call ahead for quick service.

“They call us before they are leaving their house, if they don’t have a cell phone. Or, when they arrive they can call and we will put their items outside for a no-contact pickup and they will just grab their books out of the bag or box,” Tiffany said, noting that the last name of the customer will be on the bag or box for pickup. “We don’t put them out until (they call).”

The drop box is still open for people to return books, and library staff wait three days before they place the books back on the shelf and also sanitize the outside cover of the books after they are returned.

“The other thing we’re doing in the childrens room is a craft challenge each week for the kids,” Tiffany said. “This week was real basic, foam airplane parts where they can build their plane and decorate it. Each week we’ll have a different craft with specific materials and we’ve had some people pick those up. We supply the materials and we make sure we are all sanitary when we bag them up and when the kids are done making their craft we invite them to take a picture of it and post it on our Facebook page.”

Tiffany said the response from the community has been very good, noting on Monday they bagged up 25 craft bags for children and had about 15 patrons pick up books.

Galion Public Library has been closed since March 24 so workers were excited to be able to start the curbside service.

“Unfortunately, we do not know when we’ll be able to open our doors for people to come inside,” Tiffany said. “What we’ve been told by the Ohio Library Council is that libraries can figure out their own thing at this point

“We’re still planning activities like our summer reading program. We have performers lined up and they’re going to perform virtual programs because we can’t have large groups. We’re trying to rethink how we can connect to the community when you can’t physically connect.”

Tiffany added that people who checkout e-books or virtual books, all fines have been “blanked out” at this time. She said before people could not check out e-books if they had unpaid fines. Tiffany also pointed out the library WiFi is still on and people can park their cars in the parking lot or sit on the benches sprinkled around the building and use their WiFi for the digital devices.

“Night and day it’s on if they need it,” she said. “And my co-worker Nancy is doing a fabulous virtual story-time. It’s an art story-time so once a week she puts up a new one of those on our Facebook page.”