At midnight on March 16, 2020, Frisco Public Library closed its doors to guests as uncertainty swelled outside. The library reopened in June to the public but with the children’s area barred for entry — doors locked on closed stacks. In order to balance public health concerns with access to children’s collections, where many little hands touch a lot of things repeatedly, the library began assembling enclosed grab-and-go bags to bridge the access gap and revive elements of efficient self-service.

Grab-and-go bags are assembled by library staff who are observing COVID-safe guidelines. With overall foot traffic down in the reopened library, we then worked with the city’s GIS department to harvest specific neighborhood addresses (by HOA and apartment communities) in order to nano-target email marketing/strategize bookmobile stops. Over the course of a month-long pilot project, we had bags checked out throughout the community that touched on a broad spectrum of library users.

To date, Frisco Public Library guests have checked out 1,738 bags with 8,452 items total. Early on in the bookmobile testing project, we found that adults and teens also wanted a selection of books in the grab bag format, so we curated themed selections for each group as well. We reduced bag prep time by 50% by instituting standardized work documents for processes and labeling for each. Bookmobile stops averaged 59 bags taken that represented 261 items checked out as a result.