UNT PEARL Project
Priddy Charitable Trust Funds
Outreach to Shut-in Citizens of Bowie
(BowieHospital, Bellmire Nursing Home,
Independence Hall Assisted Living)
Our Library is seeking to afford those living in the local hospital, nursing home and assisted living facility materials to enhance their lives while they are unable to come to the Library themselves.
We propose patterning this program after the virtual branch program at SouthLake (in cooperation with a local corporation – serving its employees). This program gave the corporation a designation as a virtual branch of the library. The employees request items either through a volunteer at the corporation or online through the Library’s website. The items requested are delivered to the corporation mailroom on a regular basis and those the employees are finished with are picked up on the same visit.
Since there exists a likelihood that spilling or other damage could occur in these settings, we propose to place each item in a plastic bag to protect it.
This program will involve assigning one of my Experience Works staff to retrieving the requested items from the Library’s shelves and taking them to these facilities as well as bringing back the items which have been read.
Our concept involves using electronic formats due to these clients often being unable to hold a book or turn pages, etc. The Library has an extensive collection of books on CD which are in sturdy hard plastic cases; however, the use of these would necessitate a PC – preferably a laptop with a CD drive. With the Trust funds, MP3 players, Kindles, and/or Playaways could be purchased as other options. The Library has a small collection of Playaways but would need to purchase more if they are to be used for this project.
If Kindles are used, there is a possibility they may be compatible with the 27,000 titles the Library has on TexShare from netLibrary. Otherwise, Kindle editions will need to be purchased from Amazon.
MP3 players (2 per facility) and permission (subscription, etc.) to download items will be needed for this format. However, this format and the Playaways would be the easiest to use as they do not require PCs or other equipment to use. The Library could download the title requested onto the MP3 player and then send the device to the client.
For clients who may be confined to their homes but have PCs, the netLibrary titles would be accessible through the Library’s website. We would use a small portion of these funds to promote netLibrary titles to these clients.
In order to expedite the handling of items at these facilities, the Library will request that a volunteer be at the facilityonce per week to receive and distribute them. This will be helpful not only for time reasons but also because they will know the clients there best.
We are very excited about this project. We have thought about how to acquire funding for it for over a year, so this project is very welcome to us. We believe it will be very beneficial to our community.