Dripping Springs Community Library staff create accessible space for seniors

Dripping Springs Community Library officials have been making strides toward a recent goal—making library materials more accessible to seniors.

Two-minute impact

DSCL Capital Campaign Manager Sarah Rose said after school-aged children, senior citizens are the library’s biggest demographic.

About 12% of Hays County’s population are aged 65 years or older, and about 17% of the Dripping Springs population are seniors, according to the United States Census Bureau.

“I've tried really hard to think about what barriers we have in place for different subsets and cohorts of our members,” DSCL director Mindy Laird said. “And so, in doing some thoughtful processing, one of the things that I thought about was our seniors, especially ones that are at either the independent living or assisted living centers.”

Laird began her outreach this year at Ledgestone Senior Living, where she hosted a library card drive, where residents could sign up for a library card, and has been personally delivering books to residents.

She refers to this as “like a personal library experience.” Laird offers recommendations for books and has helped residents by checking out and delivering the materials to them personally.

But just delivering books didn’t break down every barrier the aging population faces.

“When I visited one of the residents, a family member had brought her a disc player and books on CD, and she said ‘I have this, but I don’t know how to use this,’” Laird said.

So Laird applied for DSCL to become a demonstration site for the Talking Book Program, a program offered through the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. The program offers services to those with visual or physical impairments that make reading more difficult.

The program offers a “talking book machine” which includes cartridges with books on it, and large buttons that when pressed tell the user what it does.

“It's very user friendly,” Laird said.

Also of note

Another way DSCL officials have made materials more accessible was the removal of overdue fees.

Since June 1, there are no longer overdue fees for books, DVDs or CDs. Instead, a person is unable to check out more books until they return their overdue items. Lost and damaged books still incur a fee.

Going forward

Laird is also working toward setting up DSCL as an ongoing destination for Chariot, a service that provides transportation to seniors who don’t drive. Additionally, Laird is seeking to fund the purchase of Stay Sharp Kits for the library, which includes activities that improve memory and cognition.

Seniors can also soon attend a new class at the library taught by volunteer Arvind Amin to get questions answered about using any device such as their phone or laptop.

“The library's the great connector,” Rose said. “So it's about, ‘how do we better connect to those senior citizens?’”

For more information, visit www.dscl.org.