Reaching out to our Public Libraries

By Cindy Safronoff

We received a special request for us to offer gift subscriptions for The Christian Science Monitor Weekly to public libraries. Here’s how we approached this special outreach project.

At one Library the librarian on duty, apparently unfamiliar with the Monitor, perceived it as a religious publication and refused our gift subscription offer on these grounds, on the logic that as a public institution they could not accept religious literature, but she did put a few of our sample copies in a give-away pile. Another library declined our offer when we visited. Apparently they are not interested in providing magazines to library patrons anymore. At another, the librarian on duty when we visited had heard of the Monitor, but wanted to ask the head librarian about proving the Monitor for their patrons.

We have a great variety of beautiful public libraries in our area, old and new!

Libraries have a different vibe than our normal retail stops, and libraries are not often right there in the main commercial area. So it didn’t seem practical to methodically cover all the public libraries as part of our normal work. So I thought we would try approaching public libraries through direct mail.

I gave Izzy a list of cities and towns in the Seattle metro area, and she went to work Googling for public libraries in those areas, and gave me a list of addresses. We wrote up a cover letter with a gift subscription offer together, with some help from Chat GPT, I printed it up with address labels and we went to work putting a packet together for them one afternoon.

We selected three library-themed issues of the Monitor Weekly to send them. As far as postage goes, sending three issues of the Monitor seems pretty optimal, for showing several examples of the Monitor at reasonable cost. In the letter, we invited the Librarian to take a look at these issues on library-related topics, we suggested they share these issues with their co-workers, and we offered them a gift subscription for their library patrons. As far as postage goes, sending three copies with a cover letter seems optimal.

Soon we’ll know that someone at all the area public libraries will have been exposed to the Monitor Weekly.