Meet a Super Volunteer

Greetings and happy early spring to you. We are grateful for your ongoing support of Street Books, for the donations of books and survival gear, and for the stellar volunteers who help our operations. Read on to meet Margaret, learn about our Spring Campaign & learn more about how to support us.

Margaret is our Super Volunteer who joins the shift every Wednesday. She has built a relationship with a local consignment shop where she receives boots, coats and other cold weather gear to distribute at the library shifts. She always keeps an eye out for a good deal on tarps, reading glasses and other supplies people might need. When she visited the Greyhound shift and saw that people often asked for food, she began bringing snacks as well. Our ace librarian Yimei (pictured at right with Margaret) sat down to learn more about why Margaret is so super. Read their interview below:

Yimei: Margaret, who are you?

Margaret: I have no idea. My name is Margaret Brown. I’m a human being. I’m a retired hospice nurse. Mother of two bio kids and two step-kids. All grown now and they still speak to me, which I consider a real accomplishment. I’m a Quaker, which has really defined my life, and I like having fun. My definition of fun might be very different from other people’s. 

Yimei: What do you love about Street Books?

Margaret: How much time do you have? I love everything about it. I don’t even know how I ended up coming out with Diana, Yimei and Josh… and I found that was also way out of my comfort zone… and I survived… so I tried it again! And it’s just stuck. I love that it’s not just books, but as with any self-respecting library, Street Books provides social and physical needs as well, such as ponchos and narcan, and it’s all without judgment. It’s very respectful without being obsequious or patronizing. I’ve fallen in love with the organization and the people. 

Yimei: How would you describe what you do with Street Books?

Margaret: I pretend to be part of it. I called myself an apprentice a few times, or an aspiring librarian. I feel as if there is always something new to learn and there is so much to learn. 

Yimei: Why do you hang out with us?

Margaret: Because I want to. I grew up in a family where service to others was very important. When I retired from hospice nursing, I felt at loose ends. I kept busy, grandchildren will do that, but this is again providing service, and I feel as if I’m getting back at least as much as I give. 

Yimei: What’s your favorite book?

Margaret: Right now what comes to mind is the Music of Bees. I love it. It starts out with three people whose lives are in a total mess and their emotional states are in a total mess and they collide, these three worlds collide. And it ends with all of them empowered and feeling joyful. That’s not how they said it, but they’re at peace with themselves.

 Yimei: Do you find that relates to what we do?

Margaret: Yeah, and it's also just a book of hope.

Contact us at librarian@streetbooks.org to learn more about volunteering

Donate! (and consider making it monthly)

Spring for Street Books: Growing Support for a Community of Care
The Street Books Spring Campaign launches in April, and we are currently arranging partnerships with bookstores and restaurants who would like to support Street Books during the campaign. Are you a bookstore or a restaurant who'd like to find out more about what that means? Email our Operations & Development Director, Monica Beemer, for more information about what we got cooking - and feel free to propose your own ideas to them too! monica@streetbooks.org (she/her/they/them)

IN THE NEWS: Street Books board member & acclaimed human Ed Edmo is featured in a February profile in Underscore Magazine. We are grateful he is part of the Street Books crew!

Familiar Faces, Then Relief

Greetings from Street Books:

When frigid weather hit Portland last month, Street Books' Community Outreach Director, Diana Rempe, delivered hot soup to one of our community partners, the peer-led Ground Score, who opened their warehouse as a warming center during the worst days of the storm. As the ice began to melt, our street librarians hurried to their shifts to learn how our patrons had survived. Our librarian Yimei summed up our collective sentiments in a library shift report: 

"Every familiar face we saw was a not-so-small triumph and a deep sigh of relief that they had made it through the ice."

Diana Rempe offers books & supplies at the Ground Score library shift

Beyond the books and survival gear we provide at Street Books, it's our deep relationships that allow us to build the community of care so essential for our city, and for our world. Knowing each person and their unique story meant our librarians could check on patrons who were stranded outside in the arctic chill after the county closed warming shelters, while the city remained shut down due to icy conditions. Every day it means helping to connect patrons to a motel voucher, referring them to an opening at a safe rest village, or an opportunity to recover a lost ID. We meet people where they are, literally, offering genuine connection and a community built on trust. 

Last year, Street Books provided:

  • More than 7,500 (mostly donated) books 

  • 786 pairs of reading glasses

  • 962 coloring books 

  • 1,736 doses of Narcan 

  • Survival supplies, including 60 tents, 60 sleeping bags, more than 250 tarps, 400 flashlights, 480 hygiene kits, countless wound care supplies, clothes, hats and gloves

Support Street Books

A Bookstore for Us
You can now support Street Books by visiting KISS Coffee, (3016 NE Ainsworth Street). Neighbors and cafe patrons can purchase used books to generate funds for the Street Books library, and find some great deals, since each book is only $5.
at right: Piper from KISS Coffee models the new bookshelf
“We created this partnership as a way to share more books, support a local business, provide a fun resource to the neighbors and raise funds for Street Books,” says Monica Beemer, Director of Operations & Development. The collaboration with KISS means we can accept donations of hardback books again, since whatever we can't use on the library, we can pass on to the cafe to be resold on behalf of Street Books. Big thanks to Trae and Sarah Pearson and the KISS Coffee staff for their generous support! Find their hours, menu and story here!

Interested in donating books to Street Books? Visit our Wish List for more information.

Getting by With a Little Help From Our Friends

Greetings. Yesterday on the library shift, our librarian Jon talked with a patron who is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. He told Jon that it was challenging to lose so much weight and to feel weak. When Jon asked how we could support him, he said gloves and a warm hat would help a lot. Taking care of one another is inherent in the Street Books mission, and listening to the challenges our patrons face is an essential part of every library shift. It's also why we carry gloves, hats and other survival gear on the bikes. As this year draws to a close, we invite you to support our work, which puts compassionate librarians out in the streets. Help us reach our goal of $55k and support Street Books today. If you've contributed through the Give!Guide already, we thank you so much!

Give today with a donation of $10 or more and you'll be entered to win a Portland Spirit Staycation! Donate through Give!Guide between now and December 31st to support Street Books and other nonprofits doing vital work in Portland. There are still three ways to give to Street Books: 

Support Street Books

Big thanks to everybody who came to our event at Up Up Books last week. Five stellar writers read their work on behalf of Street Books. Thanks again to Michelle Gutman for hosting Street Books, and to writers Emmett Wheatfall (pictured at right with the poetry collections he donated to Street Books), Cecily Wong, Jay Ponteri, Genevieve Hudson and Matthew Dickman. Thanks also to Red Electric wines, Armstrong Vineyard, Honey Mama's Chocolates, Crowley wines and the Tin Shed Garden Cafe for donating their delicious goods for the auction. 

WISH LIST

Warm hats, gloves, scarves, reading glasses, books. Contact us at: librarian@streetbooks.org to arrange a drop-off. Thank you!

Street Books in the news: Librarian Jon Hallman recently starred in a public service announcement for Street Books and Laura Moulton spoke to KBOO's Ken Jones about Street Books.

"Every bike and every box is curated so that our patrons will see their lives reflected in what we are offering." -- Watch Jon Hallman in the PSA

"Street Books is an arts organization that offers an important service and it's very much a collaboration between librarians and patrons who on some of their worst days come and find the librarians for conversation...this is not something we take for granted." -- Listen to the interview with Laura Moulton

**Thank you to Open Signal for their generosity in creating the above-linked PSA for Street Books and for several other non-profits connected to this year's Give!Guide! We appreciate you and all you do for our community.

Heart, Humor, & Compassion on the Streets

Last Wednesday on the streets of Portland, Street Books librarians ran library shifts in northwest Portland and Old Town where they lent 40 books and received 13 returns from our library patrons. They also distributed 33 doses of Narcan, 8 tarps, and countless items from ponchos, emergency blankets, and flashlights to supplies for wound care. Street Books operates between 11-13 library shifts each week around the city. Is it rough, despair-inducing and very difficult? Yes. Especially for the people sleeping there. But it's also full of goodness and mutual care: Josh produces the exact title of a book a patron is trying to remember and Yimei speaks Mandarin to the folks at Trinity, plus calls Portland Street Medicine to direct them to a patron with a serious leg wound. Kerry delivers a book on dog training to one of her regulars and Rob runs back to the garage to replenish supplies when they run low mid-shift. This is only a tiny slice of a day in the life of the Street Books library, but it's enough to say that each shift, our librarians bring heart, humor and compassion to their work outside. On this national day of giving, we ask you to support the work we do and help us meet our challenge match. Thank you. And if you've already given, thank you again!

Thank you, Beautiful People of Portland!

Thank you to the sky for a break in the rainfall. It was a lovely gathering of people and we especially want to thank our library patrons for showing up in such big numbers. Thanks to Paul Susi for being our illustrious emcee, for Ed Edmo for the poetry and Leni Zumas for the brilliant remarks. Thank you to DJ Mami Miami, aka the writer Emilly Prado for the bumpin’ music. We are so lucky to live in a city like Portland, full of creativity and heart. Thank you, thank you.

Poets Kim Stafford and Ed Edmo strike a pose.

Happy Spring:
The trees in the city are flowering and in the pauses between sleet and steady rain, the sunshine makes us feel hopeful. About a year ago, Street Books hired our stellar Library Operations Coordinator, Josh, and this spring marks more growth: new librarian staff and a fresh roster of incredible board members, (stay tuned to meet them in a future post), who join our amazing veteran board members. We are feeling lucky to be growing the team and expanding the reach of our work. 
A sturdy team means having the bandwidth to operate the street library while also doing deep internal and external work, as we articulate our commitment to equity and what it means to us in our day-to-day work. In May we will have an all-team Equity training and in the meantime, we continue to work on distilling our philosophy into words, exploring and deepening what they mean to us in our work and vision for how our community can and should be.

Since we believe in the transformative capacity of a good book, it's no surprise that the Street Books crew has an ongoing book group intended to help us study systemic change, and to ask ourselves how we can learn from the organizers that have come before us. Here are a few examples:

We'll post more from our book list in the future -- let us know what you're reading that you love and that inspires you to work toward a more just future.

Support Our Work

Don't miss our 13th annual ribbon-cutting and summer season launch:

Monday June 5th, 11-1

(1219 SW Park Ave, outside the Portland Art Museum).

Community, cake & drinks provided.
More details to come!


Street Books is Hiring: Part-Time Street Librarian

Street Librarian position

Part-time 12-15 hours/week

$25/hour

Status: Non-exempt/hourly

Supervisor: Library Operations Coordinator

Benefits: Holidays, paid time off, books.

Founded in June, 2011, Street Books is a bicycle-powered non-profit mobile library, serving people who live outside in Portland, Oregon. Street Books librarians set up shifts around the city of Portland at the same time and place each week. There are no fees and no fines and if we don’t cross paths again, we encourage folks to pass the books on to people who will enjoy them.

Position Summary: Street Books is hiring a new street librarian. This part-time, regular position, 12-15 hours per week, involves relationship-building with the community and serving as a bike-based Street Librarian. This includes regular weekly shifts and substitute shifts if needed. These shifts are currently usually on weekdays.

Responsibilities:

  • Assist with, and sometimes lead, library shifts.  

  • Stock the bike library, bike it to the designated shift, and return it to the garage after the shift

  • Recommend and lend books to patrons, and distribute other supplies like notebooks, flashlights, hygiene kits, and seasonally appropriate warm-weather gear.

  • Cultivate community and develop mutual relationships with Patrons.

  • Keep a log that tracks information and stories. 

  • Track and submit a timesheet monthly.

  • Participate actively in equity work.

  • Read and respond to slack messages, email, and any Street Books-related phone calls/texts.

  • Lift up to 30 lbs, ride a heavy bike or trike, navigate stairs and/or loading docks

  • Attend paid meetings, retreats, events, and trainings as needed and requested.

  • Other responsibilities as needed and requested. 

Required qualifications/experience for all Street Books staff:

  • Commitment to and experience with using an anti-oppressions lens in day-to-day work and interactions, as well as organizational and program development

  • Ability to be warm and welcoming with library patrons and others in an ever-changing, sometimes demanding environment

  • Willingness to work collaboratively with a spirit of cooperation

  • Ability to be punctual with regular attendance

  • Commitment to ensuring policies and practices are followed that lead to safe and successful program experiences for all

Preferred qualifications/experience:

  • Lived experience with houselessness or working with unhoused people

  • Experience with harm reduction and conflict de-escalation

  • Ability to listen to perspectives different from one’s own and engage in mutual, good-faith conversation with all kinds of people

  • A love of reading and books.

To Apply:  

Send a resume, a page answering the application questions, and a cover letter addressing your experience related to the qualifications and responsibilities listed above to hiring@streetbooks.org. Application questions: In 250 words or less, please describe your social justice and anti-oppressions practices. In 100 words or less, What is one of your favorite books and why?

Street Books is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action, Equity-focused organization. BIPOC people and people with experience with houselessness are encouraged to apply.