Just Wondering - Engaging Our Communities

This month's column by Manitowoc (WI) Public Library Youth Librarian Susie Menk is thinking about how we stay engaged with our community. And she's wondering....what do you think?

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay 

What are you doing to engage your community this summer?  

Community engagement is one of the newest buzzwords in the library world.  Summer reading is probably one of the best ways to get out into the community. In response to the pandemic many libraries added Storywalks to engage patrons while closed or having limited program offerings for the last few summers.  Now that summer is upon us again, our programs are getting back on track.  

Our library has made it a point to focus on community engagement this summer. Our recent effort has been summer reading sign up.  A co-worker and I worked on developing outreach and engagement opportunities to bring summer reading sign up to our patrons at different venues besides the library.  We went to our local Farmer’s Market, a local brewery, and this week we will be at a local ice cream parlor.  We contacted the brewery and the ice cream parlor ahead of our visits and they agreed to give out free items if patrons signed up for the program.  The brewery gave out 5 ounces of free beer and the ice cream parlor is giving out a free vanilla ice cream cone. 

Our summer storytime is also hitting the road again this year.  Over the past few summers we’ve changed up how we do our storytimes. We’ve left the storytime room behind instead having it outside as well as in other places around our community–the zoo, the parks, and the aquatic center, to name a few.  Our storytime families have really enjoyed getting outside and listening to stories on the grass.  We find that families even stick around longer at the venues to enjoy more quality time with other families and friends.

Another big event we have been doing the last few years is Touch the Trucks.  We have trucks attend from many city and county agencies but also from local businesses.  Last year we had about 12 different groups bring trucks or tractors or large equipment of some sort.  These groups love this event and I even had someone call recently and wonder why we had not previously reached out to them.  Each year we get more people participating and since it’s an outside event it’s simple to run. Kids and adults alike look forward to this event every year.  

So…what are you doing in your community?  How are you engaging your patrons outside of the library building?  Are you excited to be out and about in your community?  Share your stories!!