Library lifeline

The Oak Bluffs library outreach program delivers more than books.

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Books ready for delivery. —Patrick Phillips

The Oak Bluffs library is no slouch. Of course, they have books, meeting rooms, and quiet spaces, audiobooks and DVDs, a copier, scanner, and printers, and are accessible to visitors of all ages and abilities. And that’s just the tip of the tall stack of materials and services they make available to patrons and visitors who come to the library. But a little-known program is a big hit that could get a whole lot bigger. Each week, people in Oak Bluffs request materials: their favorite book, audiobook, DVD, as part of the O.B. library outreach program. The program is a free, ongoing service available to all Oak Bluffs residents who are temporarily or permanently unable to get in a car and get to the library. Honestly, the people who do participate don’t know what they’d do without it.

Meet Jean. She’s a witty 90-year-old. She lives in Woodside Village in a neat apartment. Jean is able to use a walker to walk the hallway out her back door for exercise. There is even a small library down the hall. But she can’t walk the steps needed to use the Oak Bluffs library. She can’t get her National Geographic, or her Danielle Steele, or Nora Woods. Jean’s not a shut-in, but she lives alone. Tuesday, every week, three books and her National Geographic arrive through Jean’s front door in the arms of Peggy, an Oak Bluffs library volunteer. “I try very hard to finish them,” Jean says. 

Peggy is given a schedule of people to deliver books to, kind of a books-on-wheels thing, and saves Jean for last. Peggy says of Jean, “She was always very responsive, inviting me for a cup of tea or a cup of hot chocolate or a sit-down. And so I have now saved her for the last one to whom I deliver.” They have about a half-hour visit: “I’d be happy if you stayed an hour,” says Jean.

This little program, you see, isn’t a book delivery program, it’s a lifeline. It brings life in the form of Peggy, in the shape of books, in an easy chat, a cup of tea. Keeps Jean snappy and sharing stories about her grandsons. One grandson, an Oak Bluffs policeman, “has a little boy, 3 years old, and a little girl, 6 years old. “I think she’s Daddy’s little girl,” Jean says. “She was at the policemen’s dinner at Christmastime. And she had a little lamb. And she walked over to me and said, ‘Jido’ [Sit-O, “grandmother” in Arabic], ‘What can I get for you to drink?’” Jean’s life, with great-grandkids, young visitors at her back door, books to read and to look forward to, is a bit cosmopolitan, just on a very small scale. She used to go “hang out” at the Edgartown senior center. Now she can’t: “Now I use the walker. It’s like, on the one hand, it’s good to be on the walkway at all times. The other hand, well. I get to say my rosary at least twice a day. It’s my way of communicating. I’m praying to God.”

The Oak Bluffs library outreach program is actively reaching out to the Oak Bluffs community to expand the program. You can get in touch at 508-693-9433. Read more about the program at oakbluffslibrary.org/services/athome.