In our children's room they have to come to the desk to get what they want. We only have a kitchen set and Lego table out.

Dang, we serve about double the population without those issues. I would say put less stuff out or titrate it in some way so that replacement costs are able to keep pace with the loss.

As for the kids drawing on everything, is it a line of sight issue? Can the art supplies be kept within view of the service desk to help with enforcement of library rules?

How much do you hold parents accountable for the actions of their kids? Are they being charged for lost or damaged items? Do you apply patron bans to them as you would an adult without children who consistently breaks the rules?

Here's how some libraries in Australia deal with this.

Puzzles are kept in clear but lockable containers/bags. We use a cable tie to loop through the zip and a little flap thing on the outside of the bag so that the bag doesn't open, but people can still see inside. Puzzles can be borrowed and taken home. If they want to do it in the library, they still need to borrow it, and we cut the cable tie with scissors. Each time a puzzle is returned we count the pieces. If pieces are missing the borrower needs to find them, or might face a fine.

We don't have many toys, but they are labelled with a big ownership stamp (that we mostly use for daily newspapers). The toys are wooden abacus type things. They also have RFID stickers so they set off an alarm if someone tries to walk out the door.

No crayons, textas, or pencils in the library!!! (Aside from storytime which is in a separate room).

Also if you notice the kids area is particularly rowdy, staff presence, such as shelving, may deter some people from crossing the line. I will sometimes make comments like "wow it's so messy in here! I wonder how that happened..." and parents usually pull their kids in line to start tidying up. Start some gentle boundary setting, but be vague and indirect/broad with it so nobody feels specifically targeted or gets too upset.

I work in a fairly large library, and we had a similar problem. Patrons would come in and use the place as a jungle gym and let their kids demolish the place. So, we started enforcing boundaries and keeping coloring sheets in one place. They are at tables by our storybooks but also right by the staff desk. We also cover our tables with massive colored butcher paper to liven up the place and encourage coloring at that space. Folks can color on the table, and cleaning up crafts is a bit easier cause we can ball it up and throw it away if need be. We stress to parents that they can look at any book, but don't put it back, and leave it anywhere that's not the floor. We keep a return box at the staff desk, and as we walk around, we encourage patrons to put books there or on the shelf. We have a large playspace, but we don't keep our toys out. Our lead library assistant inventoried what we had and made a library of things list so pateons can check games and toys out. Patrons can't take the stuff home, but to use it in the library, they leave library card at the desk with the librarian that they get upon return.

All of this didn't happen overnight! It was really rough in the beginning, but everyone was so burnt out having to use half their shift to just keep the place manageable. Finding ways to establish boundaries and limiting access seems to be the only thing that slows down the loss and makes the cleanup doable.

Yes and no.  We would never leave crayons out near the collection.  We have toys that can be played with in the library.  We also have a library of things -- you want to take a puppet home? Check it out for free.  

The larger toys are less likely to go missing.  We always staff the children's desk.  We also have signs and tell the kids if they clean up as they play, they can earn a free sticker at the desk.  Toys aren't available all hours.  Volunteers, especially high school aged volunteers, come in regularly to clean and organize the toys. There is a coloring area with kid-sized chairs and a long counter "desk" built into the wall.  It's as far as possible from the collection.  Supplies aren't available all hours.  Also, our library use policy says that children under age 10 may not be left unattended by their adult -- which is the same standard for neglect in our state's law. We're generally pretty rigorous about enforcing the library use policy. 

We had the same issues. Our admin's solution was to remove all toys and crayons. It's been about 6 months of no toys/crayons. We get complaints about it and just explain things were destroyed so they are no longer available.

Yea same at my library. I work as a page (shelver) and absolutely hate going into the children's room to put stuff back. Its always a mess. Its so bad that we have one lady who comes in only on Friday afternoon specifically to organize the children's room.

Working in a larger library, we had some very large stuffies. A couple disappeared overnight. We figured out the cleaning crew brought their kids in and they walked out with the toys. So, it might not be the patrons stealing.

We had to get rid of everything except for single-piece toys like magnet mazes or activity cubes (the classic doctor's office waiting room toys) because anything smaller or with more than one piece would get lost or snuck into a stroller. We also had to ban crayons and stickers because walls would be scribbled on and furniture "decorated". Heck, even unattended pencils were being used to scrawl on our computer screens. Keeping the area monitored by staff at all times wasn't feasible so we just had to punish everyone by cutting things back. I'm still grouchy about it.

It might be worth investing in some really sturdy play fixtures like these. They're pricey but could be worth it if it saves either constantly replacing toys or getting rid of them entirely.

At one branch I was at we had one of those hang over the door shoe organizer with clear pockets. We had it behind the children's circ desk which was in clear view. Each pocket had colored images of the toys we had available. A child would come up to the desk and request a toy in exchange for their library card which we would hold onto until they brought the toy back.

This allowed the child to select the toy they wanted and taught them some responsibility and respect for the shared library things.

We took an unpopular approach. As things got destroyed, they stayed until they REALLY needed to be tossed. Nothing was replaced. And when people started complaining, oh well. It’s a shame that the public can’t take care of things, isn’t it?

Y’all are the reason we can’t have nice things.

Yes, this happens at my library. We accept that this stuff has to be replaced frequently. We have an Amazon wishlist so our Friends will buy it for us instead of spending library funds on it.

We've been predominantly keeping only single piece toys out and parents have to come to the desk to borrow the toys of the week which have many parts for in house use only. We don't use cards, just get their names and remind them to bring all the parts back when finished.

folks might be a bit more tentative to let their kids destroy stuff if they had to “check out” the materials at the desk and have it be attached to their account, treat the materials as a book at that point and have had another adult see them.

This is interesting, I work at a large urban library and don't really have this issue. We even leave crayons and paper out at tables near the books and everything pretty much stays contained. I'm about 90% confident in saying that a major issue is space. Libraries becoming increasingly multi-use spaces seems to work out better for big libraries, or at least ones with a lot of separate rooms/floors, than for others. Our children's department has a separate art room, play room, reading room, computer lab, etc. For the most part, toys and art supplies stay in their respective rooms, which presents them as separate activities. And if a kid is getting hyper in the reading area, parents are a lot more receptive to "hey, your kid can use the playroom if they'd like!" than "hey, stop doing that in here." One of my favorite things about my library is that kids come in for all kinds of reasons, but I think if I worked at an open floor plan library I'd be a little more stressed especially during busy times.

Some things are always out, blocks, books, larger play tables, everything else is locked in a closet (especially caryons) unless a staff person can fully supervise play. Maybe have less costly play items like paper dolls, or play food out?

for the drawing, we cover our children tables with the big white paper for them to draw there. they go wild because its something "they're not supposed to do" but we just tear it off every other day more or less

I'm in a large library in a suburb of 56,000 with middle and working class patrons. We do not use markers. Crayons, gluesticks and scissors are kept at the desk, in little sets in small plastic bowls, which are handed out when requested. We have coloring sheets at the desk, along with numerous self-directed activity sheets and crafts that change weekly or bi-weekly. Most kids sit down at tables near our desk to do that kind of stuff.

Aside from two or three large-format floor puzzles that we keep in the play area, all our puzzles circulate and are kept in zip-tied bags. If kids want to use them, they have to check them out, then we cut the zip ties off. They can then take them home or use them at the library and then return them. We do the same with our launchpads and our themed game kits, STEM kits, and early childhood learning kits. When these items are returned, we don't check them back in until they are inventoried.

We're thinking of starting a shelf of board games, which we'll buy used, to set out for the older kids to use without checkout. If pieces are lost or vandalized, we'll just toss them.

Our play area skews young, with various stationary wooden play centers that can't be moved, but have activities on the top and sides, but those are really toddler-oriented. We also have some books and a themed bookshelf, magnet boards and a rotating series of building toys like Magnatiles, Lincoln Logs and Duplos. The play area is not very close to the desk, but we try to have a staff member walk through every half-hour or so.

We used to have wooden blocks and a large wooden train set, as well as a play kitchen. They all got pulled during Covid and never came back. The trains and wooden blocks had to be played on the floor, and we thought going more for stationary and table-top activities might cut down on wild behavior. The changes we made do seem to have helped. I miss the play opportunities the kitchen offered, though Covid made us all more germ-aware and the kitchen stuff did end up in mouths a lot.

Hope you find this helpful.

We have had similar issues! We do not allow any colouring in the library at all. We give out a sticker only as kids leave, because if it's at any other time, that sticker is stuck somewhere on the walls/shelves/books.

Our puppet stage goes over well - I don't think a puppet has ever been stolen. We have felts out to stick to the front of the stage and those are constantly lost or wrecked.

For us, the price of having puzzles is replacing them every couple of months, so we try to just have cheap cardboard ones. Good quality furniture, shit quality puzzles.

It dismays me to see the state of the children's section - parents take loads of books out and leave them all over the tables,with blatant disregard for Library staff or other users; I have to tidy every 5 minutes to keep it presentable . There's no good example for their children to follow, so no doubt things will just gradually get worse and worse as the generations advance.

The last public library I worked at had a couple buckets of these big off brand "not legos". I can't for the life of me remember what they were called, but when enough of those got stolen and parents complained we were like "if you want your kids to have something play with, they need to bring their own toys".

We used to have a few other toys too and dolls too, but when COVID hit and we closed, we used that as an excuse to either throw away or pack away into storage all non-programming kids toys. We still had to clean up board books and picture books that got left laying around at the end of the day, but it helped save us more time everyday, so most of us and our manager agreed to leave thing that way.

My advice to you, get rid of toys and toy sets. If you can't do that, at least for the love of god get rid of the crayons and markers. The only time kids got use any kind of coloring stuff outside of programming was if they attended our homework help after school and showed the volunteers that they were done with their homework. And even then, those belonged in the homework help room in little mobile closets. So when they were done, they had to give them back to the volunteers. If not, the volunteers wouldn't let them come back until they and the library manager who worked with the volunteers talked to the parents and made them understand responsibility etc. etc.

Basically, don't put out stuff that you know is going to make your life harder unless you know...you want that.

I have a container that has duplos. I write on the container duplos and I have taped a picture of the container opens with duplos inside. I have a shelf where the duplos go. It’s labeled duplos. On the shelf there is a picture of the container. When someone takes it down, they can see the picture. I do that with our high interest items. That way kids who can’t read or parents who can’t read English can tell at a quick glance where an item goes.

I have a germy bucket for people to put items and I also have a didn’t finish bucket. I wipe down anything that goes in either bucket. I think that they say that there are trash cans in Disney world every five feet because that’s how far people will walk before just littering. It’s the same concept. Do you have a reshelving spot close to where you most often find dropped books. How is your signage for it? Is it mostly text with no pictures?

Temporarily, I would suggest maybe scale back what you have out and maybe rotate items out. I switch out puzzles. We have a puzzle tower and I only put out so half the tower is filled with puzzles so they don’t have to put the puzzle in the exact same spot. There are multiple empty spots, so it’s easier to put a puzzle away. I hope that makes sense.

We don't put out anything that can be eaten (puzzle pieces) as that's a choking hazard. We don't have crayons or art supplies out except during craft, at which time the children are supervised by staff AND must have a parent in attendance.

The only toys are those 'attached item' type toys - a whole unit with bead things that go along wires and cannot be broken or detached. Toys are a germ nightmare, so for hygiene reasons we don't have them around.

We pick up books if they are on the floor so they don't get destroyed. If they still get destroyed, well so be it, it happens.

We don't have pencils out where kids could get them. Adults don't need them so why put them out?

Taser? Guess not. What if you blocked it off / covered it up for a month due to damage being repaired. Lets see if they miss it

Have the stuff behind the desk and needs to be returned when they are done. If they cause a fuss say things have been destroyed and this is the only way to ensure fairness.

We have (besides a few stuffed animals) a toy car and train (IKEA) for toodlers to stack wooden shape pieces and car parts on and every evening we have to collect the pieces and look for the toys because they get scattered around. Books are left whereever they were used. In stacks, widely opened, ripped, stepped on ... always on the ground. Note that we have a cart designated to leave books who are not going home.

It's a parent's problem: they just don't teach their kids to tidy up after them and be careful with community stuff. Just last week a father said he wished we were more child-friendly after we asked his kids to not use the stools as toys, not to jump into the beanbags and not run around screaming from the top of their lungs.

When our colleague whose desk sits in the kids room is here, things go much smoother. But when there's no one to have an eye on them? Hell breaks loose. I considered gifting my old box of Lego for our kids room but honestly, I have absolutely no desire to pick up dozens of pieces every single day until retirement in 32 years. We also don't give out crayons and stuff. I don't want to imagine what would happen. I'm sorry for the kids who know how to behave. But we are way too little staff with way too little time to spend an hour on an almost daily base with tidying up the kids room.

The children's librarian at my location has signs up in the play area. If the toys disappear, are broken, or are not put away on a regular basis: We stop having toys. And she will take them away. If people can't take care of them, they can bring their own toys.

Unfortunately, this is a staffing issue. Parents are a lot more watchful if they feel like they will face embarrassment or consequences for their kid's bad behavior, kinda like how stores learned that putting signs up with focused eyes on it significantly reduced theft in those aisles.

I'm gonna go ahead and guess that having visible staffers in all sections of the children's area isn't possible, and you don't have enough staff to patrol every few minutes without getting exhausted.

In my library, messes and damages are extremely predictable because 95% of them will occur if the person who is supposed to be patrolling that hour (and we switch it out every hour to prevent burnout as the children's section has the most rule-breakers) ends up too busy to do so. But since most of the children's area is visible from the desk (only a small section isn't), they also occur in the same like three areas consistently. It's quite rare that a parent lets a kid make a mess in a visible area, though it does happen, and those same parents really do not give a single shit. The ones that only let their kids destroy stuff in the back are picking and choosing battles based on their analysis of their personal risk rather than the library's, and will absolutely prevent damage if they feel they're being watched.

Do you have coloring sheets out at all? We usually leave them out on tables and that seems to satisfy the need to scribble. You could keep the crayons behind the desk still, I guess...

Pro tip: only put out second hand toys. We get a lot of donations of puzzles and toys that we'll use until they're trashed which is great because they're getting a second life and we didn't have to spend any money.

Our town is only about a third the size of yours, but we have similar issues. Not so much coloring on the walls and in the books, but the mess that people leave behind.

When it's only a couple families, it's not bad. But when there are too many people here, it gets crazy. The adults seem to think that if anyone else touched the toys, that means that it's someone else's responsibility to pick up. One time, an adult was picking up after her kids and a second adult said "oh, don't do that. The staff is paid to do it." (I said no, it was the responsibility of the person playing or their adults. One went back, one kept walking.)

I think the bigger problem is that the adults are all on their phones and not watching what their kids are doing as they run shrieking through the building, hiding toys and throwing crayons. They don't notice when they vanish into adult areas, and we've even had a couple toddlers make it out into the parking lot by themselves.

Cell phones. It's an epidemic that is not going to go away.

We have a table covered with paper and a bread tin filled with the triangular crayons that Crayola makes. They don't roll off the table or end up in other places that way. The paper rolls that we use are the leftovers from a local printers - they call them the butt ends (from when they have a big job and need to put a new roll on rather than stop in the middle to do it). I tape them to the table with carpenters tape (the blue kind) to prevent slide. Sometimes I have to change the paper out daily. I take photos of the interesting things people draw. Right now an adult has been doing a lot of drawing there (really nice stuff), but the kids do too. Also, I don't throw away the paper where the kids can see me doing it. I roll it up and take it with me.

We have a large blue bucket on top of the shelving by the Creative Play area with "Yuck Bucket" and "Please place broken toys and toys that have been in mouths here", which a volunteer cleans with bleach once a week, and I take out items that need to be repaired. It's up high enough that the adults are the ones putting items in it.

I have a kitchen set (plastic), a train table, and a large busy box (for infants) surrounded by vinyl large motor pieces. Bins are labeled with whatever toy they're supposed to hold, but I'm the only one who puts things correctly that way. Still, they do get used, and most of our parents are good at teaching their kids cleanup at the library.

I have two small metal book carts with laminated signs that books for shelving go there, and they do get used. Otherwise our issue is that people feed their children when they think we're not looking. I put a "Feed a Mouse A Cookie" picture with a red line across it, and a note about our Mouse Problem, and we like mice in our stories, but not in our libraries.

Also, our larger puzzles for older kids are in a spot as far away from the creative play area as we can get them. And we have coloring pages and pencils in the teen area.

Our STEM table is directly across from the desk, so we can supervise it a little more.

Isn't that why it has the word "children" in the name?