Thursday, September 20, 2007

Ask and you shall receive

A couple weeks ago, I posted a blog asking you for ideas for my next blog entry. Ree requested that I give an overview of the community outreach that Missoula Public Library offers, so here goes!

Homebound Every three weeks, staff and volunteers from MPL visit homebound residents at four assisted living homes in the community, bringing them a selection of books and audio materials to choose from.

Home Delivery MPL is in the middle of a pilot project sponsored by OCLC that allows patrons the ability to have library items delivered straight to their mailbox. It's like NetFlix for books! This way, you can still enjoy much of what the library has to offer, even if you can't make it to the library!

School Presentations Our Young Adult librarian, Linette, visits local schools to let teens know about all the cool things the library has to offer them. She also does book talks, gives demonstrations of the databases MPL provides, and talks about media literacy.

Senior Outreach Marje, a reference librarian here at MPL does outreach programs for seniors to educate them about the programs available for their population through either our website or in our library. These include genealogical research, computer classes, movies, book discussion groups, and all the other adult programming offerings.

Looking Ahead
Some future outreach ideas we hope to implement are:
  • Starting branch libraries in Lolo and Frenchtown in collaboration with the school libraries there.
  • More services to the senior residences, including a possible virtual branch library, which will consists of an online catalog and a small rotating collection.
  • In-services to Senior Companions about the services we have available.
  • Programs in conjunction with the University of Montana's Gerontology program for the Alzheimer's facilities that would include movies and readings.

1 comment:

Ree said...

Fantastic, Brianna- thanks for the list. Missoula is lucky to have you guys!