We have extended the quarantine period for library items to 7 days to help protect the safety of staff and patrons. Our quarantine period is based on the results of the latest REALM testing, which studies how long the SARS-CoV-2 virus is able to survive on library items; and guidelines provided by a group of agencies consisting of Illinois Heartland Library System, Reaching Across Illinois Library System (RAILS), the Consortium for Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI), and the Illinois State Library (ISL).
What this means to you:
- When you return a library item, it will remain on your account for 7 days before it can be checked in. You will not be charged any overdue fines since we are a fine free library, and it will not affect your ability to place holds or check out additional items.
- You may experience slightly longer wait times for physical items because of the longer quarantine period.
- At this time, we will continue to keep our bookdrop open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. However, if we run low on storage space for quarantined items, we may need to adjust our bookdrop hours in the future to limit the number of returns we receive each week.
Click here for more information on the REALM Project – REopening Archives, Libraries, and Museums
