In 2024 and 2025, librarians at Western Carolina University partnered with local nonprofit Cornbread & Roses (CBR) Community Counseling to organize, expand, and assess their small but popular community lending library. CBR’s mission is to “provide a safe space for the LGBTQ+ community in Jackson County, where everyone feels accepted and understood.” In 2024, they began to expand their offerings, which include sliding-scale counseling and community-building events, to include the growing Latinx immigrant community in Western North Carolina. CBR also offers an anonymous lending library, where any member of the community can borrow books. As CBR grew, its leaders saw ways the lending library could benefit from stronger organization and expansion to reflect specific genres, reading levels, identities, and languages. Librarians worked with CBR employees and university interns to establish a new anonymous, optional return-based lending system, a simple donation system that funneled requests through a local bookstore, and a labeling system to help readers select titles. Assessments will drive additional adjustments to the lending library, and grants in progress may help fund future expansion. This session will describe the project so others can adapt and use a similar model.
About the Presenters Erica Barnett is the Acquisitions Librarian at WCU. Sarah Steiner is the College of Business Librarian at WCU. Ali Norvell is the Collections Strategist and Resource Access librarian at WCU.
