CURRENT POSITION Assistant Director, Strategic Initiatives, St. Louis County Library, MO DEGREE MLIS, San José State University, CA, 2013 FOLLOW slcl.org/content/small-business-resources Photo by Kara Hayes Smith, St. Louis County Library

Optimized Outreach

No matter how robust a library’s services, they can’t reach those who aren’t aware of them. St. Louis County Library (SLCL) Reference Manager Jennifer Gibson has been working to bridge the library’s outreach gap in several critical areas. 

SLCL’s Small Business Services already provided several resources, but Gibson expanded offerings to include virtual programming for entrepreneurs, staff-made database tutorials, and listings of community resources for startups. She created the role of Small Business

and Employment Resource Coordinator to focus on growing community partnerships and connecting with organizations to fill the needs of small businesses, and developed a Small Business Value Calculator that shows businesses the monetary value of everything the library offers in terms of costs and savings.

Part of Gibson’s success comes from understanding the services’ users. “Entrepreneurs are busy,” she says. “It’s a lot to expect that they’re going to carve out space in their already busy lives to come to a new building and learn there. So we meet them where they are.”
Her department reaches another constituency where they are with reference-by-mail services to Missouri prisons. Staff answer questions mailed to the library from people who are incarcerated, covering topics that range from trivia to how to get a job while on parole to image requests. The program’s popularity has spread by word of mouth, and the service has seen a 172 percent increase in use since 2020. 

“Jennifer is an exceptionally curious and tenacious individual, but her enthusiasm is her standout quality,” says her nominator, Special Projects Analyst E. King. “Where others see a problem, Gibson sees opportunity.”