Community health and wellness: Rural library practices, perspectives, and programs

This poster outlines a collaborative research work in progress that seeks to answer the overarching research question: How do small and rural public libraries address health and wellness through public programs? In the face of the increasing disinvestment in rural communities and their access to health care, public libraries are developing innovative programs to support health and wellness. These programs include cooking/nutrition, gardening, exercise, and health fairs. This research project is designed to better understand current practices in small and rural public libraries with regards to community health and wellness programming and to disseminate that information to assist other libraries to become even more robust catalysts of community health. The poster also suggests new ways to include rural libraries in the research of iSchools, thus inspiring and informing new collaborations