Beyond the Bookshelves

Librarian's Library by Araceli Mendez Hintermeister

Libraries are so much more than four walls. Serving everyone in a community often requires meeting people where they’re at, in a way that’s most accessible to them. Outreach services do just that. The following titles provide strategies and real-life examples so library workers of all types can leverage outreach to expand their local footprint.

Academic Libraries for Commuter Students: Research-Based Strategies
Edited by Mariana Regalado and Maura A. Smale
With commuter students making up most of the country’s undergraduate population, academic librarians need creative solutions to meet their diverse needs. This book, produced by a multidisciplinary team from City University of New York, provides examples of services specifically for nonresidential students and ways to develop these resources. Whether through textbook and tablet loaning programs or enhanced web services, libraries featured in this title demonstrate how to connect with off-campus students, many of whom require remote access or may have limited time to visit libraries. ALA Editions, 2018. 168 p. $53.99. PBK. 978-0-8389-1701-5. (Also available as an ebook.)

Loaners: The Making of a Street Library
By Ben Hodgson and Laura Moulton
Told through alternating recollections, Hodgson’s and Moulton’s tales are a poignant account of friendship, the lived experience of homelessness, and creating a street library. Moulton is founder of Street Books in Portland, Oregon, offering library services from her bike to people facing homelessness. Hodgson became a devoted borrower, but he and Moulton lost touch for two years before they later reconnected. Loaners is a reminder of the profound impact library services can have beyond their physical spaces. Perfect Day Publishing, 2021. 276 p. $15. PBK. 978-0-9836-3279-5.

Outreach Services for Teens: A Starter Guide
By Jess Snow
Perfect for library professionals at any stage of their career, Snow uses a systematic approach to provide guidance on forming enduring relationships with other community institutions that may need youth library services, such as foster homes, detention centers, and alternative schools. The latter part of the book offers tips to leverage technology, including creating digital collections for teens that further enhance a program’s reach. ALA Editions, 2020. 104 p. $44.99. PBK. 978-0-8389-4815-6.

Designing Adult Services: Strategies for Better Serving Your Community
By Ann Roberts
Designing Adult Services offers practical tips to build successful library programming for multiple generations. Chapters 8 and 9 are especially valuable for those interested in implementing new outreach services. Chapter 8 examines in-home library services like mail and personal delivery programs for homebound patrons. Chapter 9 explores offsite visits and pop-up locations as ways of bringing library services to other audiences. With numerous examples within these two chapters alone, this title inspires libraries to innovate and meet people where they are. Libraries Unlimited, 2017. 194 p. $45. PBK. 978-1-4408-5254-1. (Also available as an ebook.)

Senior Services Today: A Practical Guide for Librarians
By Ashley Brooks
For readers seeking to grow their knowledge of outreach services, chapter 6 of this comprehensive title illustrates how fostering community partnerships can not only increase library engagement but also help staffers successfully bring programming to secondary locations—especially for a population that may struggle with traveling to a branch. As the book underscores, outreach can bring enjoyable experiences and practical information to older adults. Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. 126 p. $69. PBK. 978-1-5381-4882-2. (Also available as an ebook.)

Designing Experiences
By J. Robert Rossman and Mathew D. Duerden
Rossman and Duerden look at the growing trend of experience design, a business approach in which companies seek to deliver exceptional experiences to draw customers and connect them to their services. Those in our profession can apply the lessons from this book, which details, step by step, how to effectively devise memorable user experiences. This aligns perfectly with outreach activities, which rely on patron engagement and repeat visits. Columbia University Press, 2019. 224 p. $30. 978-0-2311-9168-5. (Also available as an ebook.)

Latest Library Links

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Becky Siegel Spratford writes: “I am constantly correcting people—educated people, library users, readers—who think that when we buy a book for the library we get it in all formats for one price. They assume we pay slightly more [for electronic formats] than them, but they think for that price we get all those copies they see in our collections. We need to also work on how we communicate this issue to our card holders. So how can we share this complex issue more easily?”

RA for All, Sept. 11
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Chris Lewis writes: “For my generation and generations before us, the public library was an equalizing force in every town, helping anyone move toward the American dream. A ruling in Hachette v. Internet Archive has just thrown that promise of equality into doubt by limiting libraries’ access to controlled digital lending (CDL). On September 4, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals [affirmed a lower court’s decision that CDL through the National Emergency Library was not fair use.] If the courts won’t recognize CDL-based library lending as fair use, then the next step falls to Congress.”

MIT Technology Review, Sept. 11
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“Hispanic Heritage Month honors the contributions and influence of Hispanic and Latine Americans to the history, culture, and achievements of the United States, and is celebrated from September 15 to October 15 annually. Check out these recent releases from authors of Hispanic or Latine background!”

Seattle Public Library, September
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Cara S. Bertram writes: “The year 2023 was another record-breaker for book bans. ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) documented 1,247 attempts to censor library books and other materials—most of which were works by or about people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, or both. But attempts to limit access to literature in the US are as old as our nation itself. American Libraries travels through time to outline our country’s history of censorship—and the library workers, authors, and advocates who have defended the right to read.”

American Libraries feature, Sept./Oct.
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The Library of Congress’s 2024 Literacy Awards recognized four top honorees on September 8, International Literacy Day: The LaundryCares Foundation, an Illinois-based nonprofit that installs learning spaces in laundromats across the country; New Zealand’s Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori Inc., a network of schools working to preserve and promote the Māori language; We Need Diverse Books of Bethesda, Maryland, which helps authors and illustrators with diverse backgrounds get their books published; and the Alsama Project in Beirut, Lebanon, which educates Syrian refugee youth frequently left out of Lebanese schools.

Library of Congress Timeless, Sept. 9
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Michael Rodriguez writes: “In the first half of 2024, institutions of higher education in the United States closed permanently at the rate of one per week, according to one estimate, with little sign of slowing down. Where the author lives in Pennsylvania, eight colleges have closed, consolidated, or announced plans to do so since January 2024 alone. These closures directly impact small private colleges and the communities built around them, but closures also ripple throughout the academy, disbanding libraries and archives and endangering access to and preservation of the scholarly record.”

The Scholarly Kitchen, Sept. 5
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Daniel M. Rothschild writes: “Discussions of reading habits typically break down, at least in the first instance, along the binary of fiction and nonfiction. If you ask most people what they read, they’ll give you some version of ‘mostly fiction’ or ‘mostly nonfiction.’ I write today in praise of a third genre that few self-respecting intellectuals admit to reading regularly, though many do: the reference book. Real reference books are unpretentious, which is part of their charm. You as the reader can make them comply with the demands of your knowledge, intellect, and time constraints, not vice versa.”

Discourse, Aug. 30