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Newsletters |
Most of us have a library newsletter. I'll bet if you talk to the person who puts that together they are always looking for things to add to it. Have something ready every month for the newsletter. Sure, there may be times that there isn’t enough room, but try to get your library to carve out just a little space for outreach. You could add information about outreach programming, such as where you will be and what you are going to be doing. Many times family of one of your nursing home patrons will see that you are going to be doing a program and they will attend with their family member. I always try to encourage my nursing home patrons to bring family to my programs. (Their families talk to a lot of people and I have had many calls from someone who knows someone whose mother is in this nursing home and asks, could we come to the nursing home where their mother is. Most of the time this is a place we already visit.) If there is limited space in your newsletter you could just list a delivery date here and there. One good thing to do is to write up a little blurb about general outreach and the Talking Book program and have that ready anytime there is space to fill in the newsletter.
If you are very lucky, as we are, you have your own outreach newsletter. We have had the Senior Readers Newsletter for about 4 years now. We put it out on a quarterly basis. (See links below for samples) It is done in a simple, easy to read format. We have 700 of them printed up at a cost of $179.00 and we mail around 350 of them at a cost of $50.71 a quarter.
Even if you don’t have a newsletter of your own, you can still use other senior newsletters to get the word out. Check with your local nursing homes, most of them have newsletters and are usually willing to put in an article about library services. Our senior center has a weekly listing in the local newspaper; they always have us listed on lobby stop week, so there's some free press. The senior center also has a newsletter and they are happy to add pieces about our programs, talking books and what we call "Mail a Book".
We also have something called 50 Plus that is a free publication to our area seniors. I have not tried to advertise in their paper yet, but I’m getting there. Don’t be afraid to approach the people who are in charge of these publications, most of them are happy to have something to fill space. Hey, it’s one less thing that they have to do. I’ll give you an example of what the local health department does with my newsletter. They have a running blurb about cholesterol screenings that they send me and just ask whenever I need something to run please run that. They occasionally send me an update of the times cost etc. I usually run this for them about every third issue, unless I’m running short on material and then I’ll run it when I need it. There’s no reason we couldn’t do the same thing with someone else’s newsletter. Once you start checking around you’ll be surprised how many agencies, nursing homes and places you never thought of have newsletters that will reach potential outreach patrons and you will be pleasantly surprised by how well received your offer of a small article will be taken.