Director’s Thoughts – 7/11/19

One of my favorite things to do as a librarian and a director is outreach. I love going out into the community and talking about the library, sharing what we can offer to the community.

Yesterday, I got the chance to do a little bit of outreach in two very different ways. In the morning, I stopped by a school-facilitated summer camp for kids who need a little additional support before heading back to school in August. I was able to outreach to 100 students, sign them all up for summer reading, and share with them the great programs we have going on all summer long.

What I like about situations like this, is that even though the kids ranged in grade level from 1st – 5th grade, they all had some really great questions about the library, the summer reading program, and about the book we read. To go with our theme, I read A Hundred Billion Trillion Stars by Seth Fishman which shared some absolutely massive numbers about the world around us. The kids really loved thinking about these HUGE numbers and were super excited about earning prizes for reading they were already going to be doing at camp.

The second form of outreach I did yesterday was an interview on a friend’s podcast! We talked about what the library looks like in the 21st century, the services we offer, and things that people in the community might not realize the library can do for them. It didn’t take too much time, but it’s so fun to educate people about the library. I can almost guarantee that I can provide new information to just about everyone when I talk about libraries. Most people don’t know about all the amazing resources and services we offer, let alone the number of programs that are available to take part in.

As a director, I deal with a lot of mundane things – meetings, paperwork, budget workshops, etc. But, when I get the chance to get out of the office and share my love for the library, that when I’m really enjoying my job.