When I served at the Eureka Institute as a mentor for leaders in public libraries, I was inspired. They each come to the Institute with a proposed project to enhance their communities through library services. One was to capture Veteran's oral histories as they returned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. One was to serve the children of immigrants who stand near the Home Depot waiting for painting jobs; another was to reach out to single dads with storytimes.
At the end of the Institute, it struck me. We know who are library users are... We can look at their data by extracting our "active users" from Voyager, our lab logins (although we have not done it before), and through our remote authentications. We know our face to face users...but what about those who never use the library? Who are they...where are they?
My strategy for next year would be an outreach program to just these people. What are we doing to target services to Veterans, to Ujima, the Athletic Zone, EOPS students, to African American and Latino students who are non-users? How can we turn that around using data about these students before our contact and after our outreach?
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