News & Views, March 2011 (mp3 file; 4.3 MB; 4.34 min.)Out and About; "Pockets" storytime kit
On my twitter feed earlier this week I saw a post about a village in Cornwall that has used an old phone booth--you know, those wonderful red, British phone booths--for a library. A mobile library visits the village every couple of weeks, but that just couldn’t keep up with some readers. It’s very tiny, but it shows some ingenuity in meeting a need.
And that started me thinking about library outreach, in general. How do libraries in SW Iowa do outreach? How do you put the library out there in the community, in addition to having people come to visit in the library building? I know many of you take programs to preschools, and books to care and retirement centers, and to the homebound. Some partner in doing after-school programming. Those are all terrific outreach activities--”good on ya” and keep up the good work.
It’s good to sometimes revisit what we’re doing for outreach. Is what we’re doing still working as we want it to, doing what we want it to do? Does any of it need revising, or tweaking? Times change, people change...do any of our current outreach services need changing?
And, just for fun, think about a new outreach program or two--even if you don’t have the staff or money to implement it all as you’d like, you might find seeds of ideas you CAN do, or partner with someone to do. Open up the outreach services, air it out, see what might drop by.
A good place to start is looking at the unserved, or underserved. Who ISN’T using your library, and why aren’t they? Are they commuters or people working a different shift, and the library building isn’t open when they can use it? What are some ways--however wacky they may seem--that you could find to serve those current non-users? Technology offers some good options for 24/7 service, for some people and it’s a good time to explore those, if you aren’t offering them already. But think about some non-tech options, too. If you have a manufacturing plant in town, and some workers can’t use the library because of their shift hours, could you put a collection of books in the plant somewhere? What about the grocery store? I know a librarian in Wisconsin who would take a cartload of books to the local grain elevator, when farmers were waiting to unload their crops. Think about YOUR community, its people--those who using your library but also those who aren’t and their needs.
What kinds of outreach are you providing now? Share on the blog, and we can learn from each other!
