QUINCY — Galilee Ontiveros was filled with excitement as she showed her mom, Christine Ontiveros, the Curious George book sitting on the table at the Quincy Public Library on Wednesday afternoon. Christine Ontiveros said having the library open again is sure to make her young daughter happy.

“It gets her out of the house and she loves books, so it’s nice,” Christine Ontiveros said.

After closing its doors to the public in the middle of March due to COVID-19, the Quincy library finally reopened its doors to patrons on Monday. Branch Supervisor Schiree Ybarra said things have been great since reopening.

While capacity and other things are limited still, she said the library staff is just excited to be open again.

“We’re having just a handful of people coming in,” Ybarra said. “Monday, everyone was about books. Thy finally got to come in and choose their own books and have that capability. (Tuesday), we had a few people using computers and stuff. It’s just been nice.”

Patrons and staff are both excited to be back to interacting in person, she said. Closing the doors in March brought a feeling of desperation, not knowing how to continue to serve the community with everything shut down. Ybarra said she is friends with many patrons on Facebook, and received a lot of messages from people asking when the library was going to reopen.

“I’d try to explain to them we have all of our virtual activities, our downloadable books and stuff,” Ybarra said. “But some people out there just aren’t tech-savvy, or don’t have the devices to do it.”

She said it was heartbreaking not having anything to provide for the community. Ybarra said that goes against everything the library works toward, helping meet the needs of the community. “Having your hands tied with something completely out of your control is just devastating,” she said.

Slowly, the library was able to reopen some services after the staff returned to the building around the end of July, including offering curbside pickup. Craft kits available for pickup for kids, teens, and adults started in August and were very popular, she said.

Kits included a variety of items, depending on the age group, with sidewalk chalk for kids and more educational craft projects for teens and adults. Within half an hour of posting new craft kits, Ybarra said, cars would be lined up outside stocking up.

“A lot of parents have said they’ve been using them as rewards for their kids,” Ybarra said. “Once they get their online school done, they get to do one of their craft kits.”

Ybarra said the staff continued to look for ways to help and interact with the community despite the restraints they were under. When the shutdown initially came into play, one of the things the library was able to acquire through a grant partnership with Microsoft was a Wi-Fi extender.

This allowed the library to extend its reliable Wi-Fi service about a block or so around the building for people and students to have access to 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“I would drive by the library when we were shut down just to check on the building and in our parking lot and on both sides of the street, there were people parked out there at all times, just using the Wi-Fi to do their schoolwork,” Ybarra said. “As an agricultural community, so many people in the community don’t have internet access, so that’s a huge priority for everyone in our state in general, but definitely in our area.”

While the e-books and downloadable content were nice for patrons while the library was closed, she said, there’s really no replacing the feeling of holding a book in your hands, the smell of the book.

Patrons have taken full advantage of the library reopening this week, with many people coming in stocking up with stacks of books instead of their typical one or two. Ybarra said she believes people are preparing just in case another shutdown forces the library to close its doors again.

Ybarra said she and the rest of her staff are craving the day that things get back to “normal,” with the library returning to the social hub for the community it was beforehand.

“Normally, you’d come here and almost every table has someone sitting down, it’s a packed place and people spend hours here,” Ybarra said. “That’s kind of what the library is for people, a community hub. But with COVID and the restrictions we have, we can’t promote that.”

Visits are currently limited to about 30 minutes for every patron, with chairs removed from most tables, and public computers down from 15 available to four. She said she thinks people are appreciative of whatever they can get right now. Hopefully, she said, they will be able to get back into the normal swing of things by the spring.

Marissa Postlethwaite was browsing the movie shelves on Wednesday afternoon and said she was surprised to see the library open again. Postlethwaite said she comes to the library fairly often to check out DVDs.

“I did the curbside pickup, but it’s also nice to be able to come inside the library and browse around,” Postlethwaite said.

The Quincy Public Library is currently open Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m., 3 to 6 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday, and closed on Sunday.

Casey McCarthy can be reached via email at cmccarthy@columbiabasinherald.com.