How to run a Living Library (LL) Event

Previous Health Information Week feedback has been that people would like more information on Living Libraries.

In this guest post, Helen Watts shares her experience of running a LL. Helen is Library and Knowledge Services Manager at Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. helen.watts6@nhs.net

If running a LL for #HIW2021, you will need to consider adapting this to be an online event.

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1. Think about and write down your aims and objectives for the event so that you and your team have a clear purpose that you can easily communicate to others.

2. Arrange a date and venue etc.

3. Decide how many human books to include. About 10 is a good number but this will all depend on your focus, venue size, availability of chosen books etc.

4. Contact your chosen staff (I will now refer to them as “books”). You will probably want a wide variety of healthcare staff. Hold a meeting to explain the purpose of the event and their role and get everyone on board.

5. Create the catalogue – Ask the books to write a brief biography to create the catalogue of approximately 150 words. For the catalogue, we used a ring binder with plastic inserts so that it was easy to update. Have 2 or 3 copies of the catalogue.

6. Venue - you need space to accommodate your books and borrowers. You also need an issue desk and a waiting area if things get busy and people are waiting to talk to particular books.

7. Create a poster to display the Living Library Rules and display clearly on issue desk.

8. Registration sheet – to take part borrowers need to register with you and be issued with a library card where you can record which book they have signed up to talk to and at what time. Our borrowing cards have the rules on the back - by registering they agree to abide by the LL rules. If you want to take photos during the event, you can also get people to sign a consent form at this point.

9. Create a timing record sheet of who is borrowing who so that you can keep track of which book is available and which books are checked out.

10. Create evaluation forms if you want to evaluate. We used a simple smiley face/sad face tick box with space to write feedback and had a box they could be posted into.

11. Create badges for librarians and human books for identification purposes. Create table signs for books with role on for identification purposes.

12. Publicise your event. This is key! Use all means possible depending on your audience: your Comms team, emails / posters/ intranet / fliers etc.

Please contact me on helen.watts6@nhs.net for any further information and / or to talk over how we did it. We have a folder of templates that we can send to any team thinking of holding a LL containing rules, membership cards, catalogue example, etc.