RALEIGH, N.C. -- When Wake County Public Libraries staff members decided they wanted to better reach out to grown-ups, they started at story time.
There, a captive audience watches as their children get joyfully immersed in books, but there's rarely time or energy left over afterward for mother or father to visit the other side of the library to get a little something for themselves. So the librarians started coming to them, touting the library system's Express Book Bags program. At one story time, parents can fill out a short form asking about favorite books and authors, not-so-favorite books and authors, preferred genres and more, and by the next story time, a bag will be waiting with three books hand-picked by librarians already checked out and ready to go.
The program was a hit, and last fall the system's seven regional libraries rolled out Express Book Bags to all adults, with forms available online or at the main desk.
Kelly Karius, a mother of three, first heard about the program during a story time at Eva Perry Regional Library in Apex, N.C., last fall and decided the time was right to give it a try.
"I finally got my daughter sleeping through the night, so I'm able to stay up later and do something," she says. "I'm not really a TV watcher; I'm more of a reader. And I was just kind of excited to enjoy reading again."
She filled out the form, listing Rick Bragg, Frank McCourt, true crime writer Ann Rule and The Secret Life of Bees as authors and books she likes. When she picked up her bag, she found The Glass Castle, a memoir of an unconventional upbringing by Jeannette Walls; Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild; and The Kitchen House
by Kathleen Grissom, a historical novel about indentured servitude and slavery at a Virginia tobacco plantation.
She'd read The Glass Castle already, but she enjoyed Into the Wild (and, after reading it, watched the movie with her husband) and says The Kitchen House was "really good -- I enjoyed reading that a lot because I learned some things I didn't know."
She says she was planning to request an Express Book Bag again, and you could hear a little excitement in her voice after her experience with her first one.
"It felt like somebody was giving me a gift," she says. "It comes in a little bag, and they hand it to you, and, as a mom, you know, nobody gives you a gift. Rarely do you get something that's like, 'This is special for you, I have picked this out just for you.' You get home and you're all excited and, like, 'What books did I get?' It was nice. It was really refreshing."
Librarians get excited about the service too, says Dan Brooks, adult services manager at West Regional Library in Cary, N.C.
They use a variety of sources to zero in on their picks based on the preferences listed on the form, he says, "including their own brain and those of their co-workers," as well as online databases like
Durham, N.C.-based NoveList and Goodreads. And because they try to assemble the bags within just a few days, they're also limited to books that are checked in at the time.
"It's designed to be hand-picked and ready quick," Brooks says. "That's sort of our new tag line for it." But he and his fellow librarians don't expect the busy readers using the service to get through the books quickly, or sometimes even at all. "Our measure of success ... is did you find at least one of these three books appealing?"
Even if a patron didn't manage to read any of the books, maybe some interest was piqued, something put on a list for later. It all goes toward the aim of keeping people interested in reading, and in viewing their library as a link to that and much more.
BEYOND BOOKS
Even with all the competition for our free time -- binge-worthy TV shows, blockbuster movies, immersive video games, social media and more -- Americans by and large still find time for reading.
In a Pew Research Center survey released in late 2016, 73 percent of respondents stated they'd read at least one book in the preceding year. That's about the same number who'd reported reading at least one book each year since 2012. (The average number of books the respondents reported having read in the past year has held steady, too, at 12.)
What these readers are not always finding time for, however, is visiting their local library. In Wake County, circulation has dropped each year since 2012, as has the number of people walking through the door. Busy lives may be partly to blame, and the library system also has been working to recover from budget cuts during the recession and temporary closures for renovations. But Ann Burlingame, Wake County Public Libraries deputy director, thinks programs are the key to keeping people connected to their library.
While there are plenty of book-centered programs including the Express Book Bags, that's just the beginning. Among the Wake libraries' offerings for adults -- around 140 a week, on average, across the system's seven regional libraries and 14 smaller branches -- are music programs, craft-making, business advice, one-on-one job search assistance, yoga, tech help and more. All of the programs get people in the door and help build community. And besides, it's hard to be inside a library and not notice, and be tempted by, all those books free for the borrowing.
"I want to draw people to the public library, and I want people to see what we have to offer and what their tax dollars are doing," Burlingame says. "And sometimes I think the way you get people in is you try and build different experiences that might draw people. Some people are drawn to that idea of being in a program where you can create something, and then what our hope is is that we lead these people to our collection of different craft books."
One more finding from that Pew Research survey on reading habits is that more people now than in 2012 are reading on smartphones and e-readers. But only 28 percent of respondents in 2016 reported reading an e-book, so printed books are hardly dead. And neither, if the popularity of the Express Book Bags program is any indication, is the joy of finding a book, flipping through its pages and finding, in a way, a friend.
And that's why Wake County's libraries, even though they have increased their e-book holdings in recent years, are continuing to stock the shelves with printed books and adding programs that will entice patrons to come in and clear them out.
"They come to the library for books," Burlingame says, "but they come to the library for a meaningful experience, too."
Family on 01/25/2017