Exercise 2 - Blogs

For this exercise I have chosen to review a post on the blog entitled Librarian in Black.  It can be found at http://librarianinblack.net/librarianinblack/memoryloss/

This blog has been written by Sarah Houghton since 2003.  Sarah is currently the Director for the San Rafael Public Library in California but she writes the blog “Librarian in Black” independently of her work.

The latest post is dated July 25, 2016 and deals with the interesting and important topic of providing library services to people with memory loss, dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease.  The need to understand this topic is increasing in the western world where populations are aging, and in Sarah’s location (Marim County, CA) the median age of the population is 45.5 years – 8 years older than the US median, and almost 10 years older than the Californian median age. 

Sarah’s experience as a member of the San Rafael Leadership Group had highlighted to her the particular and increasing needs of her local community and in response she organized training for all library staff in Marim County from the Alzheimer’s Association and the local Senior Access Association.  The blog post was created as a summation of the training and some of the experiences in Sarah’s library.

The blog is neatly divided into sections for easy accessibility:

• How do memory disorders usually make themselves visible?
• How might these memory disorders present in a library environment?
• How might these memory disorders present in a library environment?
• What are people with memory disorders experiencing?
• What is the most important thing to do when working with someone with a memory disorder?
• Communicating with someone with an impacted memory can be very frustrating. What should I do and not do?
• What should I do if I repeatedly see an adult alone in the library who seems to have some kind of memory disorder and who cannot take care of himself or herself?
• What should I do if I repeatedly see an adult alone in the library who seems to have some kind of memory disorder and who cannot take care of himself or herself?
• Resources.

I found the strategies discussed in the blog post to be very useful and practical.  The simple technique of steering the person to a quieter area with fewer distractions, and slowly providing simple instructions one and a time can help to at least improve the quality of communication between the person and the librarian providing services. 

The idea of offering the library as a site for a support group is also a great incentive to extend the community services and level of engagement a library can provide. 

I would thoroughly recommend reading this blog post, as supporting persons with memory loss is becoming more frequent both in our personal and professional lives.