Franklin Regional librarians start home-delivery service for students

What’s a school librarian to do with no students in the buildings?

Take the books to the kids, of course.

“Our theory was: they’re staring at a screen all day, and when we offered them the possibility of checking out e-books, the thought was ‘Oh, more screen time,’” said Franklin Regional Senior High School librarian Wade Burtch, who along with fellow district librarians has begun home delivery of books.

Books also are distributed at the district’s weekly “Grab’n’Go” lunch distributions.

“For me, the idea came through requests for books that aren’t available in the e-book format,” said Sloan Elementary librarian Cindy Perrott. “Certain publishing companies are providing free resources to students, but the high-quality, award-winning novels by big authors are not available for free. Kids were saying ‘Oh that’s OK, we’ll order it from Amazon.’ Well, it’s sitting right here on a shelf.”

For middle-school librarian Christy Belgiovane, it came down to the district’s massive amount of free resources.

“I think a big part of it is financial need,” Belgiovane said. “We have a lot of resources, we just need to connect kids with them. And if we can take and alleviate some stress for families in this time, we’re happy to do it.”

With library books sitting untouched for six weeks or more, there was little concern about handing out potentially contaminated books.

“We’re using plastic bags to deliver the books, sanitizing and washing our hands,” Belgiovane said.

The service was launched on April 30, and Burtch said about 30 books were delivered on the first day.

“We have 93 books ordered and a lot of those will be picked up at the ‘Grab’n’Go,’” he said last week. As of May 7, about 250 books had been picked up or ordered.

Belgiovane said there have been some logistical challenges along the way, “but it’s worked out really well.”

“Librarians are pretty detail-oriented, so we were pretty thorough,” she said.

Franklin Regional students wishing to check out a library book can do so by clicking on the “Continuity of Education” link at FRSDk12.org. On the left-hand side of the screen is the logo for the “Free Library Book Delivery” program.