Studies show learning to play a musical instrument benefits people in several ways, including increased memory, boosted team skills, improved reading and comprehension skills, stress relief and more. Offering free checkout of ukuleles lowers barriers to access musical instruments and allows people to experiment before committing to a purchase. Additionally, adding ukuleles to our collection surprised people in a good way, showing them again that public libraries are contemporary and appealing.

The key element was collaboration. A Nashville ukulele player approached Bellevue Branch Manager Katherine Bryant with an offer to donate ukuleles for a lending collection. She worked with five organizations and businesses to procure ukuleles, cases and tuners, as well as to host jam sessions and ukulele lessons at the library. Katherine collaborated with collection development (to create a circulation procedure and increase supplementary educational materials), marketing and staff (to plan programming and address circulation issues).

This initiative connects our community and inspires learning through music education. The collection launched May 2017 with 15 ukuleles at four locations, expanding to 35 at seven locations when the holds queue stayed at about eight weeks long for several months. Patrons have checked them out more than 300 times. The Bellevue Branch hosted two jam sessions, bringing in 195 people, preschoolers to octogenarians. We are expanding jam sessions and lessons system-wide.