Discover how one small-town library is opening up its doors to engage residents in fresh, innovative ways—including through social media.
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Natalie Morgan is no stranger to the misconceptions surrounding her job.
“Oh, we hear all the time that libraries are on the way out because of the Internet,” said Morgan, the assistant director of Boerne’s Patrick Heath Library (PHL). “Yet as librarians we frankly need and must evolve to find new ways to get attention for the very necessary work we do.”
As one might expect, the PHL offers the usual library services to visitors—book loans, meeting space, and research assistance for kids, teens, and grownups who can’t find the information they seek elsewhere.
But the staff also prides itself on running a facility that functions as a community living room.
“We have a good relationship with area schools, and in the afternoon there’s a big swell of kids at 4 p.m. who show up to read, hang out, and even play football out back,” Morgan said. “I would emphasize that we are definitely not babysitters, but we do have an after-school guard on hand to help out with the crowd, so that the kids who drop in are comfortable and safe.”
Adults too make routine use of the facility to gather for meetings and such.
“We have five study rooms booked all the time for things like tutoring or meetings or even for local business folks to get out of the office and work in peace and quiet. There’s also the amphitheater which, while owned by the city, is here on our grounds. We’re excited to be partnering with the Hill Country Council for the Arts this spring to present live music shows in the amphitheater, February through April—and before it gets too warm outside.”
Three days a week the library’s auxiliary group opens and runs the on-site used book store at the library.
“The book shop is a fundraiser. Our friends group used to host an annual book sale every March that became increasingly complicated and stressful. The store is a way to offer that service, the sale of quality used books to the community as a fundraiser, but year round. It may have been our best idea ever.”
PHL offers an ever-changing calendar of workshops and events, ranging from meditation classes, teen photography classes, technology tips, and book readings. Morgan said the goal in the programming is appeal to everyone, from professionals at nights and on weekends to mothers of small children during the day.
One regular activity, the Magical History Tour, is popular with an older crowd and experienced steady growth over the years.
“When that event began six years ago, we only had ten or twenty people. Now we’re up to forty participants, mostly retirees, who travel around town and across the area to places like Fredericksburg and downtown San Antonio and the missions–all to learn about the region’s history. We don’t provide transportation, so participants have to arrange that on their own, but they do seem to enjoy getting together.”
Reaching out to millennials and older social media-savvy types can be as tricky for local non-profit organizations as it is for area businesses. Morgan and her PHL colleagues, however, have found a fun way to attract attention on Instagram. On Fridays they pair a book cover from the library stacks with a staff member in imaginative poses or costumes in a series they call “Bookface Friday.”
“This started a couple of years ago, when I had a book in hand and looked up to see a staff member. Something just clicked in my head, about how they could go together. Now a book cover will jump at me, and I’ll grab a poor, hapless staff member to help me. It takes fifteen minutes to set up, maybe less, and then we run it on Friday. It’s very popular on social media. People get a kick out of it. They like our Wayback Wednesday [social media shares], too, featuring archival photos. Our regular social media promotions are generally very well received.”
As fun as the Internet can be, Morgan’s hope is that people will see the staff’s online playfulness as a lure to visit the bricks-and-mortar library in downtown Boerne.
“I would love for people who don’t usually visit the library to come and see it. It’s become a wildly exciting and dynamic place. We’re always adding new books and services. It’s not the library from when they were kids, that dry, old, impersonal place. Our library is fun. And the best way to discover it is to come visit, to see for yourself.”
Pamela Price is a writer and the founder of TheTexasWildflower.com–and a fan of libraries, both big and small.
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