I t isn’t often that a group of students wants to visit my library to discuss how and why people use libraries, what services libraries offer, and how to increase foot traffic at our Kingsbridge branch. In fact, it had never happened before!

But that all changed after a teacher from a local high school proposed this visit last month. Students would make their own observations about why people were using our library, and talk about how we could get more people to visit.

I thought about the challenge of preparing a presentation to feature our different services and programs, because what you can see in one hour at one library branch is really just the tip of the iceberg.

On the day of the visit, the group came to our library and sat in the public area for an hour, coming up with their own ideas about why people used our library. Then, I brought the group into our Community Room, where I had put out flyers, bookmarks, and other promotional material for all kinds of programs our library system offers, including those that are perks of library membership. Some take place at our branch, some at other NYPL locations, and others in different parts of New York City.

I asked the students to walk around the table, look at the material, and think about which programs would draw more people into our libraries.

(Extra-credit question: Can you guess which recent program has brought the most people into our branch? None of the teens in the class guessed it! Keep reading, the answer in a just a moment… )

I also asked the students why people came into our library that morning, based on their observations during their visit. They gave several answers I anticipated: to check out books and DVDs, to use our computers, to access our WiFi, and to take advantage of our air conditioning. We discussed some things that happened during that hour that they didn’t notice (the Community Room was used for our Stay Well Exercise program during their first hour of the visit) or which weren’t visible (people can access WiFi outside the building, too.)

I also pointed out their observations would have been very different depending on the hour and day of their visit. Is school in session? Are most people at work? Is it a weekend? Are we offering a particular program for senior citizens, teens, or toddlers? Yes, some people might be at the library at any time we’re open, including patrons who are freelancers, self-employed, retired, disabled, homeless, or home-schooled, but many patrons only come to the library on specific days at specific times.

Then, we discussed all the promotional material, and I asked them to vote for the program they thought generated the most foot traffic to our library. The teens voted for several programs that definitely draw people in: ESOL classes, book discussions, summer reading club, and Teen Advisory Group.

But I explained that we get lots of people coming in every year through school outreach visits, during which library staff go to schools and tell hundreds of students about books, programs, and databases they may not have known existed. We also get people coming in after hearing about services they can use from home with their active library cards, such as Overdrive, SimplyE , and Libby (to access free ebooks and audiobooks).

With all that information, and all those services, the #1 draw over the last month has been… (drum roll, please…)

The Culture Pass program! The Culture Pass provides free admission to more than 30 organizations in NYC like gardens, museums, and historical societies. People are coming in every week to reactivate their old library cards or get new ones because they want to take advantage of this program.

We believe Culure Pass has brought in the most people lately because of its huge publicity campaign, telling people who don’t use the library regularly about this free program. 

(Fun fact: As I was finishing this blog post, a patron came up to the service desk, pointed at the Culture Pass flyers, and mentioned he’d heard about this program while he was out of the country, on vacation. That publicity machine spreads far and wide!)

By the end of their visit, the students agreed our library offered many more programs than they were aware of, and that our system deserves more visibility so more people will know about the services we offer. I couldn’t agree more!

(photos provided by the author)