With the Perry Public Library recently reopening its doors to patrons, there are still questions of when more in-person services will be available. 

Library Director Mary Murphy says the library board looks at the numbers every month during their meeting. Murphy points out that multiple factors, including COVID-19 numbers in Perry will come into play as they move forward in deciding when more services will be available to patrons. 

“Another factor that will play largely into how much interaction that we do is how many people get vaccinated.”

While Murphy says things are heading in the right direction with people being allowed to browse other things like the summer reading program are being planned virtually. If the COVID-19 positive cases were to get bad again the library would return to being closed. 

“If the number of COVID cases in our zip code went up dramatically, for example if one of the variants came and we didn’t get full coverage of the vaccine.”

Murphy says libraries in Iowa have closed back down again after reopening and seeing a spike in the number of COVID cases for their area.