Getting started with outreach: From your library to the community
This article is part of a WebJunction series offering practical guidance for library staff who are new to their roles. Looking for more support? Explore WebJunction's LiFT courses for foundational training and professional development.
Public libraries strive to be a source of information, services, programming, and resources for their community. But libraries are only useful if people use them. This is a critical role for outreach, which ALA describes as “services for those who are infrequent users or nonusers or as services for those who are traditionally underserved.” The outreach librarian brings more people into the fold of their library, striving to “provide equitable delivery of library services to all people through the development of programs, policies, practices, and behaviors which make the library available to all people.” That’s a pretty big directive to operate under, and the job responsibilities of an outreach librarian may seem endless. But they're not insurmountable.
In fact, with a few concrete first steps, you can be on your way to connecting and expanding your library’s reach in no time. If you are new to this role, here are eight tips that can help you get started.
1. Learn about the community.
Notice who is using the library and who is not. Review census data, school board meeting minutes, city or county metrics, or strategic plans.
2. Review past outreach efforts.
Find meeting minutes, event calendars, or bookmobile logs. Talk to staff members who have been at the library for some time. Find out what the history of outreach is at this library and what resulted from past outreach efforts.
3. Inventory library resources.
Know your physical and digital collection (including large print and other languages), checkout limits, hot spot numbers, and upcoming programs. When you leave the physical library, you want to promote the library accurately and in a way that is relevant to the population you’re meeting.
4. Hang out in the community.
Show up at community events such as parades, festivals, and community meetings, and listen and observe. What are people talking about? What are issues they care about? Who is out in the community that is not at the library?
5. Meet key stakeholders.
Begin to identify leaders in the community who are the library’s stakeholders. Introduce yourself and invite them to coffee. Listen to their priorities. A few ideas of people to begin with are school leaders, community center directors, senior center managers, and leads of social service agencies.
6. Shadow colleagues in other patron-facing roles.
Talk to internal front desk and reference staff who already hear daily requests from visiting patrons about community gaps.
7. Build your collaborative muscles.
Strong collaboration skills are vital, as outreach work is done across silos and in partnership with other community stakeholders. Focus on active listening, clear task division and timelines, sharing credit, and strong follow through. All of those skills make you a partner folks want to collaborate with.
8. Start with a pilot and build from there.
After you’ve been connecting in the community and you are beginning to identify some synergy, propose a pilot project that feels mutually beneficial and fairly low risk. Start there and gather data to measure its success. Read this story about an outreach program that learned valuable lessons from several trials.
Listen, engage, and connect
Michele Gagner, a community liaison librarian in Wisconsin, offered this advice to new outreach librarians in a Library Journal article: “Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Programming evolves; your outcome may be very different than what you planned, but can be valuable nonetheless. You can’t take your losses personally. . . . You have to be flexible, take advantage of opportunities, and say yes as much as you can.”
Ultimately, getting started in outreach is less about having all the answers upfront and more about showing up, staying curious, and building from there. Use these tips and advice from your colleagues to take your first steps, and the rest will follow.
For further learning:
- Outstanding outreach (Erica Freudenberger, Library Journal). "Outreach librarianship meets community members where they are, building relationships that improve libraries and lives."
- Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services: ABOS is the professional organization for outreach staff and is inclusive in celebrating all forms of library outreach. Equity, diversity, and inclusion are fundamental values of ABOS and its members. ABOS is an Affiliate of the American Library Association (ALA). ABOS Continuing Education provides professional development and networking opportunities in the field of library outreach throughout the year.
Continue learning with WebJunction
And be sure to include WebJunction, the learning place for libraries, in your continuing education. We are always adding new content. A few resources for outreach librarians will help you get started:
- Introduction to community engagement (course)
- Community engagement for leaders (course)
- Introduction to bridgebuilding: Creating a library where everyone belongs (course)
- Building community relationships for better library services (webinar)
- Co-creating library services for transformative impact (webinar)
- Librarian as verb: Activate your rural community (webinar)
- Supporting communities impacted by incarceration through library services (webinar)
- Welcoming new voices: Engaging immigrants and non-English speakers in your library (webinar)
WebJunction is the learning place for libraries, providing free professional development, practical resources, and opportunities for library workers to learn, connect, and build skills throughout their careers.
Note: This series includes a separate article for new children's librarians, new teen librarians, and new managers and directors.
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