After conducting a full walkthrough on Monday to make sure the facility is fully ready to welcome the public, officials from the Library of Hattiesburg, Petal and Forrest County will reopen the Petal branch on South Main Street at 8 a.m. Tuesday.
Sean Farrell, director of the library system, said library staff took cues from the recent re-opening of the Hattiesburg branch – such as identifying which services to bring back immediately, requiring face masks for workers and the public and how to handle returns – when deciding to re-open the Petal location.
“Hattiesburg’s a bigger building with a larger collection, but it’s also a chance for us in administration to see what did we get right and what did we get wrong,” Farrell said. “And I’m happy to say we got 90 percent of the stuff correct, and it went exactly as we thought it might go.
“I didn’t want to open and then close, and I didn’t want to open and pull back hours. So basically it was just making sure that we’re doing this correctly and well. We’re just moving slowly back to normal, both for reasons of logistics and reasons of public health.”
After this week, the hours for the Petal branch will be from noon-4 p.m. on Mondays and 8 a.m.-noon on Tuesdays. Capacity will be limited to 10 patrons at a time, and face masks must be worn at all times inside the library. Patrons will be required to maintain social distancing policies.
The staff will follow the same public health policies as the Hattiesburg branch has done, such as contact cleaning and sanitizing.
“We’re very confident now that we do know how to operate in a manner that is safe in terms of public health, but also provides a really important service to the public,” Farrell said.
Farrell said he is excited to reopen the Petal branch, especially because he wasn’t able to open it at the same time as the Hattiesburg location.
“I knew it was the right thing in terms of logistics and safety, but (I still felt bad) because so many people love that library, so I’m just very happy about it,” he said. “I’m glad to give them the service because they certainly deserve it, and I’m glad to know that now we can do it in terms of service and public health in a very strong and secure manner.”
