outreach Archives - ALSC Blog

Blogger Early Childhood Programs and Services committee

StoryTown

September 22, 2018September 14, 2018| Early Childhood Programs and Services committee|Leave a comment

An example of partnership as a librarian does storytime outreach

At Simsbury Public Library, CT we’re good at collaboration. We have an excellent record of building strong partnerships with local businesses, community organizations, schools, and other town departments. In fact, one of our strategic plan goals revolves around outreach, engaging the community beyond the library’s walls and increasing our number of off site library programs. We already have regularly scheduled outreach visits to daycares, pre-schools and schools in our area, and were looking for a new way to engage our youngest patrons, out in the community. StoryTown is a fall series of storytimes around Simsbury, CT designed to do just that. It is an ideal way for patrons to meet us in different locations around town and learn a little more about our community in the process. Each of the six StoryTown programs will take place at a different location including: Peachwave (a local business, and sponsor of our Summer…

Blogger Building Partnerships committee

Daddy & Me: A Partnership with Brooklyn Public Library and NYC Department of Corrections

September 20, 2018September 14, 2018| ALSC Building Partnerships|Leave a comment

On any given day, the New York City Jails have a population of almost ten thousand inmates.* The Brooklyn Public Library, along with the New York Public Library, have dedicated outreach teams that provide library services through a partnership with the NYC Department of Corrections. In addition to offering library lending services inside the facilities, the library has attempted to create ways to connect the people who are detained to their families and communities. This includes the library Televisit program, which allows families to visit select library locations in order to communicate to incarcerated individuals via video chats, and the Daddy & Me Program that takes place in the jail facilities. Recently I joined my colleague Nick Franklin, the coordinator of Jail and Prison Services for the Brooklyn Public Library, on a bus trip to the NYC Jail located on Rikers Island. We were on our way to Family Day,…

Blogger Library Service to Underserved Children and Their Caregivers committee

On the Road to Early Learning

September 1, 2018September 3, 2018| ALSC Library Service to Underserved Children and Their Caregivers|Leave a comment

The future of the economy is in STEM, that’s where the jobs of tomorrow will be according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Employment in occupations related to STEM—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—is projected to grow exponentially for the foreseeable future. It has been well documented that underprivileged children have a steep hill to climb to match their more affluent peers about STEAM education. In Chicago, the Chicago Public Library STEAM team is helping to bridge the gap in the neediestneighborhoods. The STEAM Team is a group of outreach library staff who travel to Head Starts and Early Learning Sites throughout the city of Chicago to conduct STEAM-powered storytimes for pre-school aged children. STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math. Introducing these skills to kids at a young age helps make them more successful in everyday life. The STEAM Team had their first story…

Blogger Library Service to Underserved Children and Their Caregivers committee

Congratulations to the 2018 Light the Way Grant Winner

April 7, 2018April 6, 2018| ALSC Library Service to Underserved Children and Their Caregivers|1 Comment

The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), has announced that New Carrollton Public Library is the recipient of the 2017-2018 ALSC/Candlewick Press “Light the Way: Outreach to the Underserved” Grant. As the winner of the grant, the library will receive $3,000 for their Literacy & Library Skills for Refugee Families program. Literacy & Library Skills for Refugee Families started in April 2017. The program was initiated during a time when the library, (located in New Carrollton, MD), was being renovated. With the encouragement of library administration, Program Coordinator, Meisywe Cavanaugh, decided to start visiting a community housing center about five miles from the main library. Cavanaugh found that there was a large population of refugee families and young children living in this area. Currently, families who attend the library program are from: Afghanistan, Syria, Bhutan, Myanmar, Ethiopia and other Arabic speaking…

Blogger Elizabeth Serrano

Engaging the Latino Community #PLA2018

March 23, 2018March 23, 2018| Elizabeth Serrano|Leave a comment

(Re)Building Latina/o Outreach: Steps to Engaging Your Community After attending my first Pura Belprè Celebration last year at Annual, I promised myself to attend more sessions and events which revolved around my culture. On Thursday at PLA 2018, I attended a great session called (Re)Building Latina/o Outreach: Steps to Engaging Your Community. What was great about the presentation was that many of the suggestions didn’t only apply to the Latino community – they applied to all types of cultures we might be serving in our spaces.

Blogger Library Service to Underserved Children and Their Caregivers committee

Bilingual Outreach at the Doctor’s Office

January 6, 2018January 5, 2018| ALSC Library Service to Underserved Children and Their Caregivers|Leave a comment

One of the most formidable aspects of public library work is reaching out to community members who are not current library users. This challenge can be made more daunting when trying to reach immigrant and non-English speaking populations who may not be present at more typical outreach events like back-to-school nights. Meeting these groups where they are is important as many times they have not previously used libraries and are not sure what services we provide or if they are able to get a library card. To bridge this gap, Alexandria Library staff members have been visiting a local doctor’s office in a low-income Hispanic neighborhood for the last three years. Every Monday morning at 8:30am, Patricia Amaya and Christian Reynolds arrive wearing aprons embroidered with the library logo to engage parents and children while they wait for their appointments. Patricia, a native Spanish speaker, talks with adults about what the…

Blogger Alexa Newman

Engaging Your Community : What Does That Mean?

November 16, 2017November 16, 2017| Alexa Newman|Leave a comment

A definition Community engagement is an important emerging trend in public libraries. What, exactly, is community engagement, you ask? Well, according to Dr. Crispin Butteriss of Bangthetable.com, it can be described as both a process and an outcome. In other, words it is both a noun and a verb. Butteriss further describes it as “the process of getting people better connected into the community and for ensuring that the services they were designing me[e]t the specific needs of the people they are working with.” Applying the principles of community engagement specifically to libraries has been the focus of ALA’s Libraries Transforming Communities initiative. The LTC initiative “seeks to strengthen librarians’ roles as core community leaders and change-agents.” On a regional level, RAILS (Reaching Across Illinois Library System) has formed a community engagement networking group. I am my library’s youth liaison to the community. I do outreach with several different agencies,…

Blogger Library Service to Underserved Children and Their Caregivers committee

Last Year’s “Light the Way” Grant Winner: Partnering with Juvenile Detention Facilities to Provide Maker-Space Outreach and Programming Using Music

November 4, 2017November 3, 2017| ALSC Library Service to Underserved Children and Their Caregivers|Leave a comment

The J. Lewis Crozer Library in Chester and the Middletown Free Library are located just over six miles apart in southeastern Pennsylvania. However, the libraries’ service populations are very different. The city of Chester has an unemployment rate of 9% and a poverty rate of 33%, with almost half of those under the age of 18 living in poverty. The city of 34,000 is also among the most diverse in the state, with a population that is approximately 75% African American, 17.2% White, and 9% Hispanic. Middletown has a suburban population of 15,807, which is 93.7% White and 3.1% African-American, and a median annual income of $77,000. However, the two libraries have a shared goal of expanding outreach and programming offerings for young people who are underserved by libraries.