Disappointing Day

Today only two children came for the storytelling hour planned at the library.  I am trying to make a connection between the school and the public library through the character education program they have.  This month's theme is trustworthiness.  I composed a list of books the library has or has access to through ILL and chose ten books that would be appropriate to address this topic.  I also created a bookmark with the theme Trustworthiness with characteristics of the trait on one side and a listing of suggested books on the other which was part of the activity planned.  I created characters for the tale The Boy Who Cried Wolf so the children could be interactive with the story while I read it.  The last activity had them making a Trustworthy Friend Kit.  The two children who came enjoyed the hour very much but it would have been better with more participants. Several families who came into the libray were told about the activity but stated they were too busy to attend.  If they had known earlier would they have made time?
The library has been focusing on getting more participation at programs the last few months, but we are limited in our advertisement options. I am having difficulty in getting a consistent group for Preschool Storyhour as well.  I tell people who come in with children while I am working that we have a storyhour on Wednesday, many don't know it. And then they need to remember, since it is not posted on the outside sign every week although it is listed on our library home page.    We have a newspaper that is published once a week and they are very good at posting our library events, the other print source is a county wide Shopper advertisement paper published once a week and they will post our advertisement if they have room.  We also have a local television station that will post our weekly events which are sent to several other local web sites as well. We are still not reaching everyone we should be.  The conference last week identified that there are many high tech ways to reach patrons now and it appears we need to begin using them to reach our intended audience.  
To reach more people for todays storytelling, I could have put a display in the childrens section and advertised it more that way. I created a display and activities for Valentines Day, next month I will crete a display in the childrens section early.  We are having a series of activities next week while the children are out of school and have gone to the school and asked them to publish the events in their newsletter. We have also given bookmarks to the fourth grade students with the schedule of activities during the winter break.   Activities are also published in the usual places and there have been bookmarks at the circulation desk all week for families to take.   I hope that we have better participation with this coming weeks events.