Here’s how this library has successfully supported community health:

• Looking for opportunities to turn library programs into partnership programs
• Getting involved in existing coalitions that include those partners
• Using contacts formed through those coalitions to construct new coalitions organized around library initiatives, particularly grant applications.

The following story illustrates how this work proceeds: In 2016, the Adult Summer Reading Theme was “Exercise Your Mind: Read.” Like libraries across the country, librarians in Clinton were looking to tie exercise into summer programming.

One of the Bigelow staff members came up with “Library Laps in the Park.” Every Tuesday at 5:30, right before the library closed, she invited the community to join her walk in the park across the street from the library. It was well attended, and so Marie and the library kept offering it after the summer ended, and even after this particular employee left the library.

Through her community connections, Marie learned that the local hospital was offering a Walk with a Doc program, a national initiative to have doctor-led walking groups available to all. The hospital came to the library and said they wanted to partner with them. Marie told the hospital “look, we’re already doing this Tuesday afternoon walk, we have a core group of people,” and the hospital outreach person decided to provide resources for the library’s walking program because it was “the best attended one” among all the walking groups the hospital had tried to start.

The partnership continued up to the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The library decided they could bring it back, with masks and social distancing, in July 20 2020. Marie said “people were so happy.”

Looking for opportunities to turn hospital programs into partnership programs

Rosa Fernandez-Penaloza from the hospital told us an almost identical story to Marie’s. It’s worth hearing this story from her perspective because it illustrates how other organizations are also often looking to transform programs they offer by themselves into partnership programs.

Rosa said: “The library had this walking lap program, and to me it only made sense not to reinvent the wheel. So I asked Marie, ‘Would it be possible to coordinate efforts with her walkers, and probably invite other members of the community, maybe our patients and so forth, and have a doctor lead the effort?’” Marie embraced the idea.

Out of this partnership came the co-branded “Library Laps in the Park/Walk n’ Talk with a Doc.”

Rosa went on to say that “now it’s the flip side: Marie has asked me to sit on her committee for the library to kind of advise the library on efforts that the library can implement, that aligns with healthy eating and active living.” This committee is the group of organizations Marie brought together to successfully apply to a number of funding opportunities, including both library funding opportunities made available by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (via the IMLS), and the Massachusetts Community Health Network Areas (via the Department of Public Health).

These grants, and the partnerships that undergird them, have helped the library offer food education programs both at the library and off-site at a food pantry, and online during COVID-19, as well as other innovative programs, like a Salsa class that combined learning to make salsa and learning to dance salsa on the library lawn.

The library has been able to do an amazing amount of things to promote community health, but it has been able to do so because the library staff have tapped into the existing network of institutions that want to make Clinton the best place it can be. What networks could you tap into in your community?

In addition to networks of nonprofit organizations, most communities also have networks of for-profit businesses. The library has looked to them as well. Marie started going to the meetings of Discover Clinton, a network of small business owners, “because I felt the library needed to reach out and do more outreach” according to Marie.

When Marie approaches a network like Discover Clinton here are the questions she asks:

• How can we help?
• What can I do?
• How can we work together?
• What can we do for you and what can you do for us?

These last two questions are key to ask because sometimes library outreach falls into the trap of merely seeking to offer more to communities, rather than turning things around and asking how the community can work with (and help to improve) the library.

As Marie said, in the best partnerships “we would sort of cross pollinate each other.” That cross pollination led Marie to start talking with the owner of a local family fitness center about the idea of library patrons being able to use their library cards to access the fitness center.

Marie recalled the partnership beginning as follows:

“I went up to [the business owner] after one of the Discover Clinton meetings and said, ‘how would you like to do this [partnership,’ and she said, ‘Yeah, let’s see how it works.’”

And from there they were off to the races. The business owner had her gym manager work out the math, and Marie and the library staff developed a survey they would have people who accessed the program fill out. Marie also approached her contacts in the local philanthropic community to see if someone would help fund the program to get it going. Ultimately the hospital was able to fund the pilot project, which had a delayed start in late Fall 2021, due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The key part of this story though is that it all started with a conversation that occurred because the library was part of a community coalition. You can have the best ideas for programs, but if you aren’t talking with the right people, they won’t happen.

The second major take-away from this story is that you don’t need to have all the details worked out to start a conversation. Marie had heard through her involvement in the public library profession that some library somewhere had started checking out gym passes. That was enough information for her to go to a gym owner and her town and pitch an idea. They worked out the details from there.

Even though, as of February 2022, the program has only been going for a few months, it has already generated a lot of buzz and interest, which has led the partners to start talking about possible expansion ideas.