The Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services (ABOS) presented “Exploring Ways to ‘Jazz Up’ Your Library's Bookmobile, Outreach, or Book Bike Program during the COVID-19 Pandemic with the Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services” on Saturday, Jan. 23, during the American Library Association (ALA) Virtual Midwinter Meeting. The session was notably encouraging and upbeat, urging outreach librarians to reframe their services during a pandemic that makes their normal activities difficult, as is the case with direct visits to patrons in memory care and elder care.

ABOS President David J. Kelsey, ABOS Past President Cathy Zimmerman, and ABOS Vice President/President-Elect Lori Berezovsky led 164 attendees through examples of outreach programs, bookmobile services, and book bike delivery systems that have been adapted to the pandemic.

Key programs include mobile Wi-Fi hot spots, food distribution via bookmobiles, mental health partnerships, pop-up libraries, activity kits to-go, recorded story times and craft sessions, virtual game shows, dial-a-story hotlines, outdoor story walks, and the circulation of mobile Wi-Fi hot spots for patrons to use at home.

Notable innovations in programming during the pandemic include window visits, in which outreach librarians visit nursing homes, sit outside a resident’s window, and call them on the phone; they repeat that process to reach individual residents around the campus. Another concept that garnered audience interest was a library drive-by event, in which the library parking lot became an event space where patrons could drive through stations representing a range of program offerings, and collect handouts, hot chocolate, and grab-and-go kits. A librarian who ran one such program reported that 2,000 patrons took part. ABOS also discussed delivering books by bike, and Karen Quest, a student in her second year of the MLIS program at San José State University, shared images of mobile libraries from around the world.

Several of the session’s speakers and attendees mentioned that the downtime forced upon them by the pandemic had allowed them to rethink their offerings and refine services, but they also stressed that their patrons were desperately lonely. Attendees said that virtual programs, although they reach many more patrons and draw a wider audience, do little to address deep isolation; technology barriers kept some patrons from participating at all. One librarian wrote in the session’s chat that patrons had called the library in tears because of the stress of the pandemic; the librarian also said that it was an honor to provide aid through their library’s outreach services.