Outreach Services for Underserved Children

Monday, October 17 – Sunday, November 13, 2022 | Four-week online course.

Outreach services for children poses many unique challenges. Since most children cannot reach out to the library on their own, the library must be proactive in outreach to parents and caregivers. This challenge is even greater for marginalized and underserved children. Reaching these children is a crucial part of outreach, but you can’t serve them if you can’t identify them.

In this eCourse, Jessica Snow will guide you through these challenges and help you use your resources to build outreach that serves all children in your community. You will learn how to identify and create partnerships with organizations that serve underserved children, how to create a core collection of materials you may use in your outreach services, and how to identify goals and outcomes for your outreach services.

Through your participation in this course, you will:

• Gain a larger understanding of the definition of outreach services for children.
• Be able to apply principles learned in the course for the creation of your own outreach services.
• Identify goals and outcomes for your own outreach services.
• Be able to construct a comprehensive outreach services plan for your library.

Course Outline

• Week 1: A brief history of outreach services. How do we define outreach services? How to identify and create partnerships with organizations that serve underserved children.
• Week 2: How to identify and create partnerships with organizations that serve underserved children.
• Week 3: Outreach in the real world.
• Week 4: Creating a core collection for your outreach services. Putting it all together.

Jess Snow is the teen services team leader in Teen Central of the Boston Public Library. She was the first teen outreach librarian for the Oakland Public Library. Snow has established several outreach partners for both the Boston and Oakland libraries and has been providing outreach services for teens since 2003. She has written extensively about outreach, as well as presenting locally and nationally on outreach services to teens. Snow served on the VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates) Advisory Board and had a regular column in VOYA for more than two years. She also served on the YALSA Board of Directors for two years.

If you have questions or requests regarding accessibility, contact us at ce@ala.org or at 312-280-5100.

CALL SPONSORED: CALL is offering a limited number of free seats to California library staff in this ALA course. Please use the link above to register for one of these no-cost seats. In order to gain the most impact from learning events sponsored by the CALL grant we ask that all participants engage fully (attend, participate, discuss and share). If you are unable or not willing to agree to this, please be kind and leave a seat or place for someone else.