Filling residents’ needs

At the margins of our population, the needs of the very old and the very young are growing.

More assisted-living places have gone up to accommodate elderly residents, more day cares have been built to take care of area children, and Spokane County libraries are trying to make sure they all have access to books and other media.

“The comment that we get most is just the excitement that we are coming out to them with library materials,” said Ellen Miller, a regional manager with the Spokane County Library District.

The duties of the district’s outreach services, which used to be run from the Spokane Valley Library where Miller works, were recently spread out across the district. Instead of outreach librarians serving the whole district from one place, each branch will now shuttle materials to facilities in its area.

Hopefully, library officials say, that will allow them to reach more of the growing number of adult- and child-care centers in the county.

Librarians presently make it out to 33 of the 121 adult facilities in the county and 35 of the 208 child-care centers that qualify for the program, Miller said.

“It’s a huge difference,” she said.

Since the change, the district has sent letters to day cares and is getting ready to send letters to the adult homes that might be interested in what it has to offer.

No staff positions have been added or eliminated, but the district hopes to reach more patrons simply by changing the way the program works.

“We’re going to save enormous amounts of travel time,” said district director Mike Wirt.

The district’s outreach department was formed about 35 years ago and was run in more or less the same way until this fall, he said.

There also will be changes in the services the libraries deliver, depending on how many places request them.

For example, to help keep up with the demand for off-site story times, the district is preparing kits for employees at day cares to start their own reading programs. They take into account the reading skills of different groups of children, Miller said, and include 10 or so library books and a set of activities to go with them.

“We are actually tailoring those kits to those learning abilities,” she said.

At the adult-care centers, residents are able to access all of the books, movies, CDs and videos in the catalog without having to make a trip to a branch library.

“We really try to be the front end of the entire library district,” said Don Nelson Wednesday as he prepared materials at Bethany Place north of Millwood.

In addition to the books and movies ordered by residents, the district provided several tables worth of additional material they might be interested in.

A book scanner attached to a laptop computer Nelson and his colleagues bring with them allows books to be checked out on site and then recorded back at the library.

The visits also provide personal contact between residents and librarians. One man enjoys books on cars, Nelson said, so he is always sure to bring him the latest automotive literature when the library gets it.

The district also continues to mail library materials to people who live on their own but have a hard time leaving their homes. Anyone interested in that service or others should contact their local branch of the Spokane County Library District.