Lightning Flash Writing

This writing sample is part of the preface of my nonfiction book Library Volunteers: A Practical Guide for Librarians.

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Library Volunteers: A Practical Guide for Librarians is a complete handbook to starting, restructuring, or maintaining a volunteer program. Volunteers are one of the most overlooked and underused resources available to nonprofits and other organizations. This handbook will help find willing volunteers in the community and utilize their skills in a way that benefits the volunteer as well as the organization. 

Overseeing volunteers can be a daunting task. On top of all of the other duties library staff are typically responsible for, creating a volunteer program from scratch can seem nearly impossible. Hiring a volunteer coordinator or allowing a specific employee to hand off library duties to other staff in order to oversee the volunteer program is ideal, and this handbook will help that person minimize the initial workload of taking on a volunteer program. With stretched budgets and endless job duties, hiring a new person or shifting responsibilities is not always possible in a library environment. With all of the background information and sample paperwork included, this handbook lightens the load for library employees kickstarting a volunteer program, even with the other duties they need to complete. Anything that can make volunteer management easier on library and nonprofit staff will benefit everyone involved.

While the language and job descriptions are specifically geared towards volunteer programs in a library setting, the information provided can easily be adapted to help any nonprofit organization take advantage of potential volunteers and utilize them in a way that will further the organization’s mission. Sections on outreach and connecting patrons with volunteer opportunities beyond library walls will also benefit various community organizations in terms of potential partnerships. These sections will also help community and nonprofit organizations understand how they can work with libraries to leverage all of their resources.

The work doesn’t stop once the program is created: volunteers have to be trained and retained; job duties have to be written, assessed, and refreshed; the benefits of the program need to be documented and weighed. This book covers every aspect of volunteer programs, from creating, to recruiting, to retaining and keeping the opportunities fresh and appealing. It has information pertaining to elementary age, teenage, and adult volunteers, including innovative and unique volunteer positions that can be offered to them. The book covers both school and public library settings, but the information provided can be adapted slightly to benefit any organization that has a need for volunteer help. 

The book looks beyond the scope of the library to include information on outreach and partnering with community organizations to provide volunteer opportunities to library patrons and volunteers on a broader scale. It is a complete handbook for library and nonprofit employees to use to solve any volunteer issue they might have.

After working in public and school libraries that did not have developed volunteer programs, I thought about how I could create them, how I could bring others on board, and how it could keep running beyond my tenure. The information in this book is innovative because it provides all the background necessary to start a program but includes a way to keep the program fresh and expand it beyond the library walls, so that the volunteer program will be positioned to make an impact on the community at large, not just the library’s patrons.