Baltimore County is economically diverse. In some areas, 0% of children ages birth through five are living in poverty. In another, it’s nearly 25%. Of the county’s 174 schools, 63 are Title 1 and 43.7% of students are eligible for free and reduced price meals. Prior to July 2018, our outreach did visit child cares, but many of them were in areas where families already had access to the library. The service was very adult-centric — teachers chose books for their lessons. This impacted children, but did not provide a library experience.

We split our all-ages outreach department — Adult and Community Engagement for adults and YFE-MEG for birth-18. To reach undeserved children, we mapped key risk factors — those under age five in poverty, education attainment levels of adults, food deserts, non-English-speaking homes — and looked for child cares who accept vouchers, have ESOL children, participate in the Child and Adult Care Food Program or have children with an IEP or IFSP. We mapped these locations to identify their status in or out of the high risk areas.

Using the data mapping, we know all our stops are in underserved areas which was our primary goal. Children checked out 10,858 books and we delivered 80 themed teacher collections, increasing our impact. We also increased the children’s engagement with books. Feedback received from teachers included: “The children are reading more in the classroom since we started coming on the truck because they love the books they checked out.”