Thursday, April 23, 2020

Capitalize on your StoryWalk During Social Distancing

Photo of a frame on our StoryWalk outdoors in a park
About a year ago now, we installed our first StoryWalk. You can find more information using the StoryWalk tag here. It's been a super delight and has been much beloved by those in our community who have discovered it.

It is so nice to have a small place for the library out in the community, particularly during this time that our buildings are closed. We are promoting our StoryWalk to our patrons while cautioning them to distance their families from others and to avoid touching the frames if they visit the park. You may or may not feel comfortable encouraging your families to leave their homes and it's perfectly understandable if you don't. However, I know that quarantine can be super hard for families and especially for kids and visiting our local park is, I think, a low-risk activity if they practice social distancing. Our parks have closed the playgrounds, sports facilities, and restrooms, but currently our walking paths are open.

The StoryWalk is a fun activity that may still be appropriate to share with your community. It's also an opportunity to reach out to families and promote other collections and services that they have access to while your buildings are closed.

Photo showing a frame in our StoryWalk that promotes our digital services

As part of our latest StoryWalk, our marketing coordinator included some information about accessing our digital materials and our virtual programs. We have found that each story we've put in the StoryWalk has had fewer spreads than our 20 frames, so each time we have posted a new one, we've been able to devote a few frames to promoting other library activities or services.

Photo showing a frame in our StoryWalk that promotes our virtual storytimes
This time we are utilizing these frames to highlight digital services that folks can access from home. And, really, it's something that makes sense for us to promote all the time. I think we'll likely continue to promote digital services this way for the duration of the COVID crisis and probably forever. More and more folks are discovering our digital services who never used them before.