Service Beyond the Library

Edit: Transcript saved at http://bit.ly/1hQT0zK

Service Beyond the Library: In-reach/Outreach
Thursday, April 17, 2014
9:00 pm Eastern/6:00 pm Pacific time

We know it's important for Health Sciences/Medical Librarians to provide outreach to meet the greatest number of users.

I'm going to use two different terms to help us navigate our users:

• In-reach: Providing services outside the library but to internal user groups. Ex. you work at a hospital library but want to reach more users within the hospital.
• Outreach: Providing services outside the library to external user groups. Ex. you work at a hospital library but want to offer consumer health information classes to a neighboring senior home.

Having these two terms will help me in building Thursday's discussion.

Here are a couple of questions that may come up:

• What problems do you have getting out of the library for even an hour?
• What struggles do you have with either in-reach or outreach?
• What works for you in providing outreach/inreach?
• What would you like help with regarding outreach/inreach (aside from extra staff because that's not happening)?

Have a good 'read' and get ready to chat about service beyond the physical library. I know from any and all previous Twitter chats we may diverge from the topic at hand and that's perfectly fine. I look forward to seeing you on Thursday's #medlibs chat!

Never participated in a Twitter #medlibs chat before? Check out this overview and join us, we're a supportive community. See you Thursday, April 17th 9pm EST/6pm PST.