By Hannah on April 24, 2026
With a little help from LibGuides, Worcester Public Library (WPL) was able to turn a large community-building event into an opportunity to share valuable resources! Each December, the city of Worcester, Massachusetts kicks off the holiday season with a Festival of Lights event, which attracts 5,000 people. WPL sits in the corner of the park downtown and stays open late for the event to connect with patrons and foster community.
The library gets a fair amount of foot traffic because of its welcoming environment – and the possibility of meeting the Grinch! Many people come inside simply to escape freezing temperatures, so the library started a tradition of handing out warm drinks. They distribute about 600 cups of free hot chocolate to visitors – many of whom do not have a library card. Executive Director Jason Homer came up with the idea of using the cups they were already handing out to advertise what the library had to offer.
From Idea to Execution in 15 Minutes
Jason shared, "Literally the morning of – we were stacking cups to queue everything up, and I looked at the cups, and I said, 'Why aren't we marketing with these?'" They decided to add a QR code to each cup, linking to a page that could really capture attention and highlight a service that the community might not know about. WPL chose to advertise their eBook collection but needed to explain how users could access eBooks through the library on a variety of different platforms.
This is where LibGuides came to the rescue! In only 15 minutes, Jason threw together a LibGuide from scratch, with clear instructions and links to help visitors get started using eBooks. They also included tabs with their library card application and a feed of upcoming events.
"Take Chances, Make Mistakes, Get Messy!" 🚌
"Without LibGuides, I wouldn't have been able to get the project done like that," Jason stated. Although the goal was to reach as many people as possible, he noted that if only two people had visited the LibGuide, that would have been enough to justify the effort.
"I do live my life with Ms. Frizzle in mind. You know – 'take chances, make mistakes, get messy'. It's something I encourage my staff to do as well, to take on exciting new things, figure out something, take a chance. Risks are okay, failure is okay. But this was a really fun quick thing…this was an easy win," Jason commented.
After the success of this initiative, they saw an opportunity to scale the idea to other spaces. The content was evergreen, so the same guide could serve multiple purposes with no necessary changes! "I never have to go in and update which programs I'm highlighting…this is supposed to be as hands-off as possible… so that QR code might have been created for the Festival of Lights, but it can still be used in 6 months."
Growing Community with Caffeine
Just a few weeks later, during a city cabinet meeting, Jason recalled the City Manager asking everyone to think of actionable ways to be more friendly to small businesses. On his way to the library, Jason stopped at a local coffee shop for a pick-me-up and was struck with the idea of putting a LibGuide on their coffee sleeves.
The coffee shop was eager to partner with the library. In fact, they had recently made the difficult decision to remove a book exchange shelf due to space constraints. "They said they had been thinking about how to involve books in the coffee shop, and I just walked in and handed them the solution."
In a matter of a week, they were printing thousands of stickers to put on every sleeve with the coffee shop's logo, the library's logo, and the QR code linking to the LibGuide. Although they have paused distribution for a sleeve redesign, the LibGuide was getting an average of 11 visits a day during the initial run. One impromptu idea led to a friendly relationship between the library and a community-focused small business.
Jason shared that without LibGuides, both of these ideas would have probably died in committee. "For me, the story of these coffee cups and these hot chocolate cups are that I would have had to wait a full year to execute that project had it not been for the ability to create a dedicated webpage that I could launch in 15 minutes."
Has your library made innovative use of LibGuides or any other Springy Tool? We'd love to hear about it – Submit to Springy Picks or send us a proposal to present with Springshare!