Books2Go- Daycare Outreach

Before I came to my current library, there was a dedicated Outreach Librarian position. Unfortunately, with budget cuts it was a position that was not filled after the librarian retired. This really hurt our relationship with local daycares since we could no longer visit them on a monthly basis. As much as we wanted to continue this outreach, there wasn't enough staff time to make it possible.

We provide a yearly preschool tour, themed around a book character, for daycares to come visit the library. However, we've realized the logistics of taking a field trip with 15-30 children, under the age of 5, can be a nightmare. The centers have to get permission slips, pay for a bus, and coordinate it around their already busy day. We also offered to come to each center once a year and provide an outreach storytime. While centers took advantage of this offering, they were disappointed that once a year was all our staff could feasible do with our reduced staff.

The department decided to emphasize outreach events at the centers when parents were in attendance during this transition period. Attending literacy nights, family days, and more- the department wanted to focus on bringing our literacy message to caregivers in person.

Luckily, our boss, Marge Loch-Wouters, developed a great initiative to keep the daycares supplied with books and use minimal staff time. Books2Go debuted in 2010 with 13 local daycares and Headstart opting into the program.

A weekly Books2Go cart- ready for checkout! 

Each month we deliver a bag of 10 books to every classroom. We check out each center's books on a library card that doesn't accrue fines. These cards are only used for Books2Go, and the centers do not know the barcode. We have separate child care provider cards they can obtain if they would like to check out books themselves. Making special library cards was an important way for us to keep track of the number of books each center had, and allowed us to see if any books were missing each month.

Some things that didn't work with this initiative:

• Advertising- Each month we tried stuffing the bags with flyers for the centers to hang up, upcoming program flyers, or library card registrations. The next month we would find 95% of these items still in the bag. Eventually we realized we were wasting a lot of staff time and money photocopying things that no one was using.
• Volunteers- Initially we wanted to use volunteers to deliver our books each week to the daycares. However, the majority of our volunteers are retired folks who we quickly realized could not physically lift over 40 pounds of books at each drop off location. Our volunteers also use their own vehicles for insurance reasons, and we quickly realized that this would be asking too much with all of our deliveries.
• Emails- Most daycare workers are extremely overworked and underpaid. After trying to communicate via email for various reasons we quickly realized that most centers check their emails once a week at most. We've since learned that if we have important time sensitive information to convey (a change in delivery schedule, missing books, etc) we need to call them on the phone. 

Some of the biggest pros with this initiative:

• Lost Books- Initially we expected that each center would lose books throughout the year, and we were willing to take this loss. However, we've been pleasantly surprised with how responsible the centers have been. Each center is so excited about this program, even five years later, that they take extra care to have the books ready for us during pick up day.
• Day Care Relationship- We had high hopes that this monthly delivery service would start repairing the library's relationship with the local day care centers. While they knew we had lost the Outreach Librarian position they were still upset that we no longer could offer monthly outreach visits. This initiative has definitely helped to rebuild those relationships. It has been a great solution so far to our shrinking staff.
• Circulation- We are happy that this program helps boost our circulation numbers each month, especially as we've been seeing a gradual decease in circulation numbers. We currently serve 17 sites and check out 720 books each month to our centers. That's over 8500 extra books we're circulation each year! 

A quick shout out to the various staff members, and former boss Marge Loch-Wouters, who were fountains of information in regards to this post, since I wasn't here when the initiative started. I asked Marge specifically for her biggest pro and con with this project and here was her response:

Pro: Book Exposure! Making sure that kids in care were exposed to a wide variety of books- both new and classing- on an ongoing basis was key. This was an important change from the book bins that had been left at the centers monthly. Each of the old bins had been developed with a grant over a decade before this initiative and the books shared with the kids were never updates. So providers and kids were being exposed to the same books every year. Having fresh books through Books2Go for kids and caregivers to discover was BIG!

Con: Adapting- Helping out child care community adapt to a change necessitated by budge cuts (the first of many ongoing cutback) was a big challenge. As a department, we looked at what we could sustain that would provide early literacy benefits no matter what future budgets were like.

Do any of you do special outreach initiatives to daycares beyond traditional storytimes? I would love to hear about them!

The Biggest Baby Shower Ever – Community Outreach

The community I live in is amazing. There are so many great opportunities for library outreach. We go to school fairs, parent read nights, mom & baby classes, daycares, and anyone else who will invite us. One event that I look forward to every year is the Biggest Baby Shower Ever!

It is coordinated by the Mayo Clinic and groups come from all over to participate. There are about 20-30 booths at this event, with everything from the YMCA to Mary Kay represented. The library has been lucky enough to get invited to this event for the past few years. Around 250-300 people attend each year, and it is a great opportunity to meet new patrons!

I always make sure to have a bright and fun table. The event is located in a Children's Museum, so I'm competing against a lot of background items to grab their attention. I also make sure to have some sort of "giveaway" for parents. Fact– New moms love free things.

This year I brought plastic keys and rubber duckies to hand out. Each had a sticker with our logo and website on them. Truthfully, I found both of the items in the basement (lots of buried treasure down there) and decided I was tired of seeing them every time I went downstairs.

On the table I included some of our alphabet sensory bags we use in storytime, board books, a handout about storytime,  and a sign-up sheet for our Baby Book Bees initiative. I also set up a little reading nook in the corner with paperbacks of popular characters for older siblings who were getting bored. I had quite a few parents thank me for this last minute addition.

They only got the bib if they signed up for Baby Book Bees.
Once people started showing them off
I had lots of questions about the program!

The main thing I highlight when I talk to people are our storytimes. We offer speciality ones for infants, babies, toddlers, and a family storytime. I also talk about all of the different resources we offer such as DVDs, books, audio books, etc. I encourage expecting moms to use us to read parenting books. You'll only read them once or twice and they're usually $25-$35 each! It's way more cost efficient to get a library card and check the books out from us. I keep our tri-fold pretty sparse and use lots of white space. I usually only have parents for a minute before they walk away, and the pictures always make them stay a little longer.

I love this event because I get to meet potential patrons for the first time, while also seeing some old friendly faces. I always leave this event feeling successful because of the number of people I speak to, but this year the success was even more apparent. We opened up storytime signups the following day and my infant storytime is almost full 2 days into sign-ups! I've never had an infant storytime fill up, so we're all feeling pretty happy about this.

Does your community have an outreach event like this? If not, you should convince your library to organize it. It is a great resource for new parents and it's a wonderful way to reach new patrons!

Making Community Connections

Last week, I received a call from a local organization who finds housing for single or expecting mothers. The contact had just started working there and was going through all of the information they gave to their clients. She informed me that the library information was from the early 90's! Her exact words were "it's kind of yellowing". Needless to say, I knew this needed to be fixed.

My assembly line of information.

 
We sent them packets including a library card registration, 1000 books before Kindergarten information, a general library brochure, and a booklist for new or expecting mothers. Other than the booklist, everything already existed and simply needed to be printed. Even though the booklist was created, it only took about two hours and has a multitude of uses in the future.

The total time spent updating the information, printing things out, and making packets was around 4 hours. To renew a community connection and potentially reach 50+ new mothers, the time spent was well worth it. Plus, the groundwork is laid for any future outreach for new or expecting mothers.

Outreach is vital to libraries. If you are not promoting yourself in the community, you are doing both your library and your community a disservice. You will always have those families that come to the library no matter what. The families that went to the library as a child and are now continuing the tradition. However, there are so many adults that were not regular library users in their lives. By promoting the library and all of the services you offer, you have the potential to reach a patron base that never would have stepped in your doors.

As a library, you should be a destination in your community. If your budget is getting slashed, you need your community to support you and advocate for you. If your budget is still slashed, you might need your community to both advocate and donate. Don't wait until you are about to lose your staffing/hours/book budget to promote yourself in the community. If you are already a community staple,you will be much harder to lose in their eyes. So, what are you doing to promote your library in your community? Could you be doing more?

Also, read this by The Magpie Librarian and go write an email about NYC libraries. Five minutes of your day could make a difference to millions.