Bridget Marquis proclaimed  “nobody wants to actually do it!” She learned that not enough institutions are focusing on this mission and how as a community and country, it is not healthy for us to co-exist independently. There were suggestions offered to attendees of things they can try to encourage socioeconomic mixing such as organizing events around “Universal desires like eating together. If there is an existing language barrier in the community, maybe try a dancing class that promotes movements instead of talking. Hiring people who speak other languages could help bridge a connection with those of different cultures. A way to look at planning is to answer the question “How can we encourage people to talk to each other?”

After questions were posed, the panelists recommended actions for the people in the room to implement this new information. For librarians who need to run these ideas up the chain of command, it would be best to consider how their managers respond to suggestions. Librarians should affirm the mission aligns with the values and data of their institution. For those managers and directors, the panelist posed a call-to-action to rethink their perspective and ask new questions: How to institutionalize this mission? And is there a need to reconsider positions in practice to accommodate these changes?

Shamichael Hallman explained the staff training element to the project: Routine training for staff, understanding your demographics and the reality of demographic shifts to come. He suggests booking podcasters and visual artists to provide a fresh new design on library programming. A way that these libraries chose to collect the data to attempt to represent everyone in the community was by collecting zip codes. To help measure impact they focused on outcomes and outputs for specific channels, such as civic health, and civic education like initiatives and awareness.  You can visit their official website at www.civiccommons.us.

Culture in My Neighborhood: Bringing the Arts to Every Community and Every Library

Mary Ellen Messner (Chicago Public Library), Jennifer M. Lizak (Chicago Public Library), and in partnership with the Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events (D-Case) & the Chicago Park District (CRD), presented the outcomes of hosting a full year of events in libraries centered around different cultures. Year One was an expansion project for One Book, One Chicago 2022. This major partnership pulled off a total of 167 events in 73 library locations with over 3,500 attendees. A partnership called Everyone Chicago was able to host black programs, finding performers using a collection of zip codes. These events explored programs such as making headwraps, celebrating Kwanzaa, and hosting bilingual performers.

During Year Two in 2023, Chicago Public Library (CPL) also celebrated 150 years young since the Chicago fire in 1870. They celebrated 150 years by throwing a birthday party in 87 branches! Yes 87 birthday parties at 87 branches. They enjoyed music, refreshments, concerts, puppet shows, foam parties and animal shows appropriate for all ages. When they sat down to plan this phenomenon, they asked themselves, “what is a birthday party?”

These birthday parties helped increase sign-ups for the Summer Reading Program. They offered walking tours of the neighborhood, and D-composed concerts by Black composers. They held a community quilt making art project in ‘Grab & Stay’ Kits at each branch. Other art programs they hosted were “Be the Head of Your Community” head sculptures, marbleizing paper, and “Architecture in your Community,” since architectural design is a staple of many Chicago neighborhoods. They even hosted Drag Queen Storytime.

Another innovative program Chicago Public Library held towards their mission to bring art to every community is hiring an “Artist in Residence.” Antoine taught Haitian Culture, portraiture, food, farming, and physical labor. She was on a stipend and was offered a studio space for two years.

How to Design a Comprehensive Culture Initiative

Goals & Resources
First, the panelists explained that you should establish your goals. Then inspect the type of resources you have: how much money do you have? What about venue space available? Who’s Your audience? Consider your marketing strategies, any existing partnerships you have, and existing art programs.

Partnerships
When you consider future partnerships, think about who you can work with: Museums, artists, authors, ethnic organizations, parks, schools, colleges, chambers of commerce, and businesses, then you call them. The panelists suggest considering who their partners may even be, and if you can work with them as well.

Share Goals
What are your shared goals with the community? Is your mission centered around economic development? How about to showcase the value of the library to the community or the community value to the surrounding areas? Maybe collectively, you all want to just celebrate in general, or enable safety in the community.

What Can You Offer One Another?
How can the library benefit from a partnership with the Chamber of Commerce? The local music schools. Or the community center? How can the Chamber of Commerce benefit from a partnership with the library? The Music School? Or the community center?

Pilot Everything- Allot time and grace in the process to test all your vendors, performers, and institutions. Not all participants’ goals will initially align with your own policies. For instance, a performer may not understand that they cannot solicit business during their workshop(s). Therefore, it may require that stakeholders meet several times to refine their agreement and get an understanding. One employee of Chicago Public Library warned to start small and then expand as you learn, grow, and try new things. Have as many meetings as necessary to get on one accord.

To learn more about this citywide effort visit One Book, One Chicago at the CPL.

Collecting Stories from Underrepresented Communities: How to Co-Design a Community Archive at Your Public Library

Panelists came together and discussed a toolkit they developed by engaging their communities in Co-designing a Community Archive in a Post-Custodial-Hybrid Post Custodial context.

What is a Community Archive?

The Tacoma Public Library’s Community Archives Center recognizes and highlights the historical phenomenon that underrepresented and marginalized communities’ stories and experiences have been suppressed and/or misrepresented in American recorded history. After the 1990s, there was a call-to-action to reimagine archival scholarship and the core values of social justice. According to ‘critical archival studies,’ the values of community archives lie in making archives more inclusive, recreating ways to record history retroactively, and training others on the practices and methods to expand the scope within society.

Tacoma Public Library considered the role that social identity and power plays in a community having an accessible historical footprint that accurately depicts their essence and their experience in society and culture. They aimed to produce a collection that celebrates a rich and diverse heritage that encompass commonalities such as “geography, identity, occupation, interest, faith, belief, or experience; or purpose, event, or mission.”

The key to engaging these communities was to allow them to participate with the project on their own terms. That is what they defined as Active participation of the community. In giving them the control, the project was highly participatory. Not only were they granted control of how they shared their stories with library staff, but they also were stewards of the archives along with library staff. The library was cognizant of sensitive matters and were willing to develop alternate archival practices to accommodate their subjects. They acted as advocates for social justice organizations and even offered representation.

There are five types of Community Archives: Post Custodial with no collection of physical materials (DENSHO); Hybrid post-custodial and traditional collecting (Community Archives Center, Tacoma Public Library); Community-institutional partnership (Mazer Lesbian Archives); Independent Grassroots (Lesbian Herstory Archives); and Institutional-housed and built community archives (Witness: See it, film it, change it).

How To Plan a Community Archive?

The recurring thread of the entire project is building partnerships that support the creation and the preservation of your community archive. With that being said, “planning a community archive is a marathon, not a sprint.” Stay flexible, even after initial success of the project. Building viable relationships is the planning period of creating a community archive. In this planning stage you are fully engaging your subjects and learning about them to understand who they individually are to the community and what the community is for them. What have they already begun to archive and what resources are they willing to provide towards your efforts? These conversations may give you an idea of the grander theme of the community you are working within.

Be careful to ask for low-effort engagement when you do garner interest. Start small by asking for contact information so they can at least stay informed about future updates with the project. Be flexible and diverse in how people can participate in different ways. Clearly state what you want in the transaction from partners. The panelist recommends that most people want to know what the cost and the tangible benefit of their contribution is. Here you can provide your intended outcomes. They also recommend appointing an advisory board to continually engage with partners through the duration of the project. The board can act as a consistent benefactor for participants and you and answer questions that may arise.

The planning process entails using models of engagement; Will your organization carry out most of the activities, or will you allow other organizations to be an intermediary? Should you have a broad or focused community participation?

From there, you identify & initiate funding opportunities, build community trust, build team capacity, design the archive, and iron out all the permissions, ethics, and copyrights details.

The reports of this toolkit and its exhaustive process can be found on the Tacoma Public Library Community Archives website.

Building and Sustaining a Community Archive

Community Outreach
When the planning is all set and you have everything you need to proceed, you begin to collect materials!  Understanding what access really demands is understanding that all media types and platforms will not be accessible or user friendly to your audience and/or subjects. So, Tacoma Library found it pertinent to emphasize community outreach to provide firsthand discovery of materials and increase awareness. They did not merely make an event and assume people will come, they instead attended the community’s events and started the conversation on 1:1 engagement with the materials and interviews.

Partnerships
Tacoma made partnerships with a slew of different organizations with different plural perspectives. They built a partnership with an immigrant refugee house named the Tacoma Community House. The Community House offered short oral history interviews in adult English/Language Arts classes. Consent forms were translated in their original language for subjects. The Tacoma-Pierce County Black Collective recorded a documentary of the history of their members. They offered extended interview footage from the documentary to the repository and other documentation from previous programs from the group such as Black History Content. Radio Tacoma offered to donate their full past programming catalog of three Radio Tacoma Shows, some related to the legalization of marijuana and climate change. The Women’s Intergenerational Living Legacy Organization (WILLO), agreed to transfer the extensive library of born digital videos from their public storytelling events to the Community Archives Center. Finally, the Hilltop Action Coalition agreed to provide access to the Hilltop Action Journal, a print and digital community newspaper published every other month.

Collection Building at Events
Tacoma did not sit back and wait for the information to be volunteered to their institution, they went out among the people and set up a worktable to engage the community, so they could learn more about archival practices and have agency in their community archives. This looked like setting up a digitization station for scanning family photos, an oral history interview booth, and filming a storytelling contest. Recurring events gave them the opportunity to expand these efforts by setting up two of each station. For more rallies and campaigns, they allowed participants to take pictures with their signs and upload them to Northwest ORCA, a CMS platform. They also were able to express the reason they chose to be a part of said cause. Here’s a list of community events Tacoma was a part of to collect Archival materials.

• African American Family History Event 2022 & 2023
• Rally for Reproductive Rights
• Poetry Picnic
• Black Lives Matter Mural Project
• Neighborhood Branch Preservation Events
• Food Bridges Us & Memoir Writing Kit
• Metro Parks Dash Point Park and Pier Public Meeting
• Earth and Diversity Week
• Stadium High School Library
• T-Town 2023

Community Archive Activities
After attending community events and building trust with the communities, Community Archives hosted their own events for collection development. At each event the attendees had the opportunity to experience archival practices, while simultaneously helping the archives fill in the holes of the history of underrepresented groups. For instance, during the Story Mapping event, an online map was presented to display areas in the community and people were encouraged to tell stories centered around the location and its significance to them. Other events are listed below:

• Interactive Digital Story Mapping
• Co-Design Workshops
• Gallery Walk
• Oral History Interviews
• Digitization
• Youth stations
• Create your own Comic book
• Information tables (Tabling)
• Storytelling
• Presentations
• Community Sharing
• Articles
• Exhibit
• And Lunch

Sharing and Sustaining the Archive

Feedback from the community revealed that they were interested in gaining equitable access to materials, despite not having academic researcher credentials. They recommended that the archives even build a traveling exhibit that brings materials into community sites.

Another sustainable practice is incorporating the community archive into the school systems. The classrooms can not only help perpetuate the skills of future generations knowing how to preserve community history, but also the students can offer an intergenerational perspective of the same occurrences. This toolkit hosts a wealth of information regarding a sustainable community archive project.

The post Socioeconomic Mixing: Creating Public Libraries Where Everyone Belongs first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Kenwood, Hyde Park, Woodlawn, and South Shore, on Chicago’s South Side, will offer completely free counseling regardless of immigration status or having insurance. Children ages 13 and older are provided services as well. These four branches were selected due to minimal mental health services available in the area. In 1991, seven of nineteen clinics closed. In 2012, half of those remaining twelve were also closed down. Since then, advocates have been pushing petitions, referendums, and votes for tax increases to fund the effort of reopening clinics in Chicago. In 2019, Mayor Lori Lightfoot pledged to allocate $25 million toward restoring the shuttered mental health clinics, but instead she awarded 12 nonprofit organizations $3.1 million, to offer mental health care across the city.

A Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health shared how excited she is to have libraries participate in the cause to alleviate the city’s mental health crisis. Dr. Allison Arwady shared that libraries, “are critical components of our social safety net and are often the first point of contact to city services for many of our vulnerable residents.” Youth and those battling with homelessness are among these vulnerable residents. Today, there are only five Public Health Centers citywide that offer free counseling services.

Other libraries in the country have made an attempt to deploy different initiatives and employ health professionals in their system. This is due to the belief that community members feel more comfortable seeking information in the library setting, which is free, versus that of a clinic. The Pima County Library was the first to hire a public health nurse as a full-time employee. San Francisco Public Library hired a psychiatric social worker in 2009.  The NYPL “Spaces to Thrive” program has also emerged as a successful initiative. Spaces to Thrive  is located in 13 New York branches. They offer onsite mental health workshops hosted in partnership with the New York City Department of Health, Mental Hygiene, the Jed Foundation, Flora Mind, Safe Horizon, and The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. They offer trainings through  Mental Health First Aid.  Spaces to Thrive also allocates a dedicated “ThriveNYC” bookshelf, which features nonfiction and fiction books about people living with mental health challenges. They will soon add books in different languages in this collection.

Chicago’s efforts to offer actual free counseling, not just information about mental health, is the result of a long effort to make the city’s government take ownership of the crisis. The Collaborative for Community Wellness has a campaign called “Treatment, Not Trauma” which speaks out in opposition to the divestment in public mental health resources. Treatment, Not Trauma advocates for treatment programs and aims to create a 24-hr crisis response hotline for mental-health related emergencies and to reopen shuttered mental health clinics. They are working toward the goal of the program becoming a priority of the city, so that it will remain sustainable unlike grant programs. They believe that public oversight and a community advisory council should be available in each public mental health center. They argue that police response is not a reliable enough tactic for the mental health crisis occurring in  Chicago, and that the county jail has become a mental health refuge for many citizens.

Free mental health services in libraries could lead to more accurate mental diagnoses, active improvement in communication skills, improved capacity to change self-defeating behaviors, relief, and greater confidence in decision-making skills. As mentioned before, residents rely on the library with their most vulnerable basic needs, so to have access to free counseling would provide innumerable benefits to the health of the community. Moreover, there has been an increased awareness in libraries and among library staff  of the importance of trauma-informed approaches, emotional wellness, and mental health.

Read more about this project:

Chicago Sun Times “Bringing Mental Health Care to All 77 Chicago Communities Is an Important Step.” February 11, 2023.
City of Chicago Office of the Mayor “Mayor Lightfoot and the Chicago Department of Public Health Announce the Expansion of Citywide Mental Health Network to All 77 Neighborhoods” February 9, 2023.

The post Welcoming Mental Health Counseling at Libraries first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

The Meridian Library District’s Board of Trustee reported that hundreds of thousands of patrons visit the library every year. Board of trustee chair, Megan Larsen, commented that it is unfortunate that a small group of people are “willing to dissolve the library, shut it down completely, rather than let families make their own choices about what they want to read, as they’ve done for nearly 100 years in Meridian.” There are 45,000 cardholders in the district. A levy in 2019 was passed in Idaho, where the district has planned to open 3 more library branches in response to patron’s feedback.

In the petition, the signed citizens stated that the Library Board of Trustees has failed to discuss ‘any policy change regarding minors’ access to obscene and sexually explicit materials. The petitioners went as far as to suggest the commissioners of Ada County appoint an interim Board of Trustees to reorganize the library entity and to decrease the terms of the members of the Board. They want board member terms reduced to three years from six. The petitioners reiterate the board’s refusal to allow any discourse on their stance of the matter. In August 2022, the board heard two hours of public testimonies. The group would also like the library entity to “segregate explicit materials.” The Library District feels that this is an extension of the banned books saga, where in March 2022, bills against books were passed through legislature but were not turned into laws. The Idaho Press found that the books that were brought to the attention of lawmakers were cataloged in the teen and adult fiction sections of the library. Nick Grove, Meridian Library Director, spoke against the group in November 2022 stating, “You have the right to object to an item. You have the right to recommend a reconsideration of an item that you don’t like,” Grove said, “You do not have the right to ban books or segregate access to books that you do not want.”

A rally was organized against the petition by 19-year old Izzy Burgess. Izzy Burgess used to work for the Meridian Library District. Another BSU student also spoke against those who had a problem with the libraries. Naomi Trueman proclaimed that, “parents should be more concerned with their children’s internet access themselves, something they have control of, than blaming libraries and librarians for the information they have available.”

If this petition is successful the Library District can be dissolved. The petition needed 50 signatures to be presented to the Ada County Commission. The clerk delivered the petition to the commission on livestream. There will be a public hearing on March 20, 2023 to address the petition. This hearing will determine if the library dissolution will be put on the ballot or not.

The post Group Seeks to Dissolve Library first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Here are ways to start and maintain Community Refrigerators in your network:

Apply for a Grant

The Franklin Avenue Library applied for a Microsoft Grant called ChangeX. The ChangeX Grant funds projects that intend to bring impactful ideas to communities. The library used the money from the grant to buy their refrigerator and groceries to start. If you cannot secure a grant, begin a fundraiser or move around your budget to purchase a refrigerator.

Consider where you will place the refrigerator(s)

Prior to the libraries establishing community fridges, vendors tried to place community refrigerators on willing residential properties. However, due to zoning laws and permit issues, these residents were fined by the city. The fridges were removed and another solution was needed. So,  some libraries and organizations in Des Moines put their community fridge(s) on the outside of the building. Other libraries and businesses held their fridge inside of the building and set it up in a room as big as a ‘Friends of the Library’ bookstore. Placing the refrigerator on the outside of the library allows unlimited access to the free fresh groceries. The community can restock the fridge at their leisure and there are no restrictions on when it can be accessed, morning into the night. When the fridge is contained in a building, the access is restricted to operating hours, unless an establishment is 24/7 like a hotel lobby for example.

Beware of challenges of maintaining a Community Refrigerator

There are difficulties in maintaining a community refrigerator on the outside of the building. On a community page associated with a refrigerator, garbage accumulated around the fridge and outside of the building. Apparently, donors would leave the boxes and garbage bags that the food was carried in when they restock the fridge. It left an unfavorable mess on the property. On the Facebook page, members have laid out some “housekeeping rules” to better manage the resource. If you decide to place your refrigerator outside, establish some instructions and policies so that you have an appropriate accountability system to how the Community fridge is operated and maintained. Also, establish ‘etiquette’ rules. For example, encourage no loitering, soliciting, or any other behavior that would make it uncomfortable for people to do what they need to do, get what they need, and move along

What food is acceptable?

At the Franklin Avenue Library, “standard pantry items are accepted: rice, dry beans, canned goods, oatmeal, pasta, etc.” They also accept freezer items such as frozen vegetables, fruits, and meals. Perishable foods require more discretion, but are acceptable. Places like the Sweet Tooth Urban Farm grow their own food. They give contributors the option of buying their raised food to donate to the refrigerator, or refer to a place that has excess food to give away. Moreover, some businesses that may have the food to donate are cautious of liability laws that may affect their reputation. Look into your state laws concerning federal protection against donating food that may prevent the willingness to participate in the cause.

How will you track its effectiveness?

Sweet Tooth Farms stock their fridge 24/7, no sign-ups required. Their attitude is “If you are hungry, use it.” In this case where there is no physical monitoring, some refrigerators used a Raspberry Pi to track how many times the doors are opened and closed. Organizations that house the fridge during operating hours can keep a door count on the traffic and also facilitate donations as they come in. If it is important to them to track what food items are being donated most, or what is demanded most they have free will to do so. However, discretion and a carefully-considered tracking system is needed in order to minimize stigma.

In conclusion, there are many ways to establish a Community Refrigerator in your neighborhood. Using Des Moines as a guide, they have employed fridges in libraries, at community centers, recreational centers, apartment complexes, and hotels. Use partnerships to solidify a constant flow of donations and allow the community to manage the refrigerator on their own to encourage personal responsibility.

The post Addressing Food Insecurity with Community Refrigerators first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

So, what is a Family Place Library? And what do they set out to accomplish? Family
Place Libraries is an initiative created by the Middle Country Public Library in Centereach,
New York, with the goal of turning libraries into community centers for literacy, early childhood development, parent education and engagement, family support and community information. The model is for libraries to act as the key institution in the community, serving and supporting early childhood development and families. Libraries are charged with the responsibility to “reimagine their
role, change long-held programming practices, and open up new kinds of relationships with
parents.”

Core Components of a Family Place Library

• Trained Staff
• Parent Child Workshop
• Collections
• Specially Designed Spaces
• Collaborations and Partnerships
• Additional Programs for Babies and Toddlers
• Outreach

Key Features

Participating libraries had certain characteristics that qualified them as organizations that
had the capacity and institutional support to successfully implement the program. All libraries
had a children’s program in operation. All libraries had a form of a children’s space already.
Many of the libraries had been working to improve their early childhood and family program
offerings, and all had an interest in and willingness to transform their programs along the lines of
Family Place Libraries as a requirement of acceptance into the initiative.

Key features that facilitate the success of the program are in its four main goals:
1. Provide substantial training to librarians, leadership, and staff members to expose them to
core components of the Logic Model.
2. Create a unique interactive space that promotes research-based best practices for an early
childhood/parenting space.
3. Establish libraries as the key institution and community partner that serves the
information and education needs of families and young children.
4. Develop the caregiver’s knowledge and use of the library as an early childhood and
family resource center.

Program Outcomes and Impact

In 2012, The Middle Country Public Library asked Nagle & Associates (a national consulting firm) to develop and implement a multi-year evaluation of the Family Place Libraries initiative. They sought to evaluate the FPL model as a vehicle for institutional change (Final Evaluation Report). They assessed Staff Change, Library Culture Change, and Change in External Position of Library to measure the logic model in libraries from 2012-2015. The subjects of the study were twenty-five libraries from the Southwest to Midwest, and the Northeast to Central, all representing urban, suburban, and small-town communities. Here are a few key findings from the report:

Training
Library administrators and staff participated in the Family Place Libraries Institute and online
training. The Institute increased library leadership’s knowledge of Family Place Libraries
objectives and their role as a family support institution. When families visit the library, they
should become aware of the full-range of services available to them from the staff. When they
accepted FPL, they agreed to host The Parent-Child Workshop, a five-week program that
includes toddlers, their parents, and local professionals who can serve as resources for parents.
The workshop emphasizes to parents how they are the “first teachers of their children.”
In the beginning of the evaluation, the initial training included 28 libraries. At the
conclusion of the evaluation 25 branches were remaining. Of those 25 branches, 19 branches
were spread out amongst seven library systems, and six branches were stand-alone libraries. Of all participants, more than 50% of the trainees were in support of becoming an FPL program after
the Family Place Libraries institute.

Interactive Unique Space
The libraries created interactive early childhood and parenting spaces by rearranging their furniture so that smaller children could reach materials themselves, adding toys, strengthening their childrens’ collection, and adding or improving a parenting collection. At the beginning of the evaluation, only 56% of the libraries had some form of parenting collection. By the final report, 95% of the libraries had a parenting collection in their children’s department. They recognized and valued the benefits that the movement of furniture, collection, and toys served for children.

Eighty-five percent of librarians reported a positive change in their ability to reshape
their programs aimed towards child development’s best practices. The consultants also
employed interviews and surveys to gauge opinions and satisfaction with the program from
parents and community partners. When asked if the library supported them in their role as parent,
80% reported yes. 65% of parents reported that the library staff spoke with them about child
development. The Family Place Libraries were reported as vital and important links in their
local early childhood support systems.

Key Institution and Community Partner
Another part of accepting Family Place Libraries as a partner, libraries were charged with the
responsibility to create a communications plan in order to carry out outreach around the Early Literacy services and programming that are available through the library. Ideally, the library would
have needed to reach out to community partners to either co-create programs outside of the
library, or bring the outside resources into the library. Most libraries achieved the basic requirement for outreach. Many reported to not have the time to put forth more effort than the
bare minimum. There are opportunities to provide more outreach if libraries hire an employee
whose job is solely to lead that goal.

Develop Parent/Caregiver Knowledge
Family Place Libraries called for caregiver’s participation and involvement to constitute the
effectiveness of the initiative. In outreach efforts, parents are intended to meet family support
professionals. In participation in programs, such as the Parent-Child Workshop, parents are
intended to meet other parents to minimize the isolation parents had reported in raising their
children without the proper support system or ecosystem. Parent’s isolation reportedly decreased
from 15% at the start of evaluation to 9% at its conclusion.

Over the course of three years of hosting Parent-Child Workshops, at the Family Place Libraries, 3,200 children and 2,900 adults were served. Most parent participants were already regular users of their respective libraries, so it was difficult to track an increase in usage of the facilities. There is potential for growth in the relationship between parents and community service providers. However, community partners did report optimism in libraries’ new positioning and “willingness to be part of the safety net for
families.” Family Place Libraries  has a presence in over 500 libraries across 32 states.

The post Family Place Libraries™ Making Its Way Across the Nation first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

BINGO!

In the summer of 2020, we hosted a book bingo reading challenge wherein patrons could choose from a list of titles reflective of a theme on a bingo sheet. When the patron completed a sheet (or got BINGO!), they could submit their form and be entered in a raffle for a brand new Kindle Fire. There were three levels of difficulty for this reading challenge, in which the incentive encouraged patrons to submit up to three bingo sheets for more entries to win the prize. This challenge created awareness of different genres, authors, settings, and stories.

Craft Class in a Bag, Book Bundles, and More

On top of the book bingo challenge, we offered “craft class in a bag.” This featured bags containing a variety of craft projects which patrons could complete at their own pace. In the bag were essential supplies for the crafts. This program has evolved, and “craft class in a bag” now focuses on only one project with a theme. Themes are inspired by holidays, awareness months, and any celebrations within the library profession. We designed bag labels, website widgets, Facebook flyers, and signage for each theme, each month. In the bags, we also included booklists to promote new titles or titles that corresponded with the theme.

A further pandemic offering, we implemented Book Bundles, these are themed bundles containing three books of similar style and genre, so readers have ready access to readalikes.

The circulation team also created their own ways to entertain guests as they registered for library cards and purchased books at the book store. We handed out gift bags, and raffles for new card sign-ups; we played trivia games, decorated balloon arches, created a scarecrow, and decorated for holidays. We even hosted a couple of spirit weeks to boost the morale of our team.

A year later, we are continuing our ‘craft class in a bag’ programming since patrons are eager to see month after month what we have in store. We have extended Book Bingo to four total sheets and have upped the ante to prize packs curated with themes, hobbies, and books to match: Plant Lady gift baskets, Grill Master prize pack, and Puzzle Lover Prize Pack, to name a few. 

Reopening with New Programs and Services

Now that the majority of library staff are vaccinated, we are planning more programs that will invite our partners to return to assist and educate our patrons as before the pandemic. We will invite concerts and bands back into the library. Offer displays of local art exhibits, and explore new opportunities for our local history collection. We are now a passport acceptance facility, an AARP tax aide partner, and a LinkedIn Learning partner. We are exploring opportunities in digitization and archival research to offer more programming with our archival collection. 

The post Twelve Months of Passive Programming first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

*hours were adjusted from 10:00 AM-5:00PM
*no more Saturday hours or evening hours
*six public computers were available out of twenty-four
*Wi-Fi was available for parking lot use
*no in-person programming
*no helping patrons directly
*one-hour time restraints for library use
*no faxing, no copying, nor guest passes
*fines were waived
*books were quarantined for 72 hours.

By October 2020 as the state of Florida moved into phase three, we slowly
extended our services: we bought a new, simpler copy machine that
patrons could operate on their own; we opened twelve of twenty-four public computers; books were quarantined for 48-hours; fines were
implemented; six chairs were provided throughout the library so patrons
could sit for up to two hours; we allowed donations for the bookstore
again; and library workers are doing their best to indirectly assist patrons.

On the front line, I have helped landlords and tenants find the
necessary documents to settle or articulate their claims in the midst
of a housing crisis. I have assisted patrons urgently seeking to print living wills, powers of attorney, and FMLA forms, so that children and caregivers can legally look after their ill loved ones when time was of the essence. I have helped patrons figure out how they can receive COVID-19 payments
from the government. We provided voter registration forms and
personally sent in applications for patrons in a very important
election race. The county supplied our branch 6,000 masks to
distribute for free.

As the days pass, I realize that the community needs the library,
always. Members of the community are on the phone line before our
doors open. They are at the door waiting on us at 10 A.M., and they
are leaving here when we close the doors at 5 P.M. At this moment, the
free masks have run out and it is truly up to the patron to wear a
mask to stop the spread. In the event a patron does not have a mask,
the chances of emission will increase between staff and user and user
to user. How much longer can we deny patrons the help they need while
protecting our own lives in the process?

We have decided to purchase a number of new laptops in order to be
able to increase and improve the user experience through
demonstrations. The world is moving more and more
into digital spaces, but there is an alarming number of the
population who still do not know how to confidently open their email
from the desktop or have never used Microsoft Office. How do we
increase the population’s information literacy now more than ever?

As the pandemic continues, how do library workers stay safe and still
provide the services desperately needed in our communities?

The post Blurred Line Between Safety and Service first appeared on Public Libraries Online.