Outreach services
Outreach services bring the library to anyone facing barriers, strengthening individuals and families, improving quality of life, creating community, and increasing understanding of library resources.
Services to At Home patrons
At Home service is provided free of charge to Hennepin County residents who cannot get to a library due to illness, disability, or visual impairment.
At Home patrons can request any material that can be checked out of the library, including books, magazines, DVDs and CDs, to be mailed to them, free of charge, in a postage paid returnable package.
If you have any questions about At Home service, please call the At Home line at 612-543-8850.
Apply for At Home service
- Apply online: Submit an online application
- Apply by phone: Call 612-543-8850
At Home phone line
At Home patrons can call to request materials or to get answers to informational questions, book recommendations, and all the services received in a traditional library setting.
- Call 612-543-8850.
- Staff are available Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., except holidays.
Services to corrections
Outreach provides service to meet the library needs of the residents of correction and treatment facilities in Hennepin County, in collaboration with Hennepin County Department of Community Corrections and Rehabilitation, and the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department.
Programming at the facilities is funded, in part, by the Friends of the Hennepin County Library.
Outreach serves several facilities in Hennepin County.
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Library staff visit both men's and women's sections of the Adult Corrections Facility (ACF) weekly to deliver and take information and material requests.
In addition, the Library provides the following programs:
Freedom Ticket
To help ACF residents better prepare for their release, Outreach staff developed the Freedom Ticket program to promote the library as a reentry resource. The program offers job resource workshops and other reentry-related classes at the facility as well as a website with information that could benefit people leaving corrections facilities.
One Read
Residents at the women’s section receive a copy of the same book, participate in a discussion group, attend a performance, and ask questions of representatives from resource agencies. Past books discussed were "The Soloist" by Steve Lopez, "The Secret Life of Bees" by Susan Monk Kidd, and "The Grace of Silence" by Michele Norris.
Read to Me
Read to Me promotes family literacy by empowering incarcerated parents to connect with their children at home through reading. Librarian-facilitators and a volunteer work with ACF residents to select age-appropriate books and record themselves reading to their child. The books and recording are given to the child, and the parent is encouraged to continue reading to their child during visitations and after their release.
Library service at the Public Safety Facility consists of a collection of donated and withdrawn paperbacks distributed on book trucks to the eight sections of the jail.
Library staff visit the Juvenile Detention Center twice a month with new and donated library materials, take requests from residents, and work with teachers at Stadium View High School.
Services to senior housing
Deposit collections
Outreach provides deposit collections at senior housing sites in Hennepin County. These collections are delivered to people who live in group residences and who cannot normally visit the library in person. Sites include senior assisted living residences, skilled care centers, rehabilitation facilities and memory care sites.
Each site receives four different collections a year, with 30 to 90 items in each collection including westerns, mysteries, romances, nonfiction, bestsellers and audiobooks. Staff and volunteers make the materials available to residents.