Highland Springs Senior Community Operates Extensive Volunteer-Run Library Network
A network of four volunteer-operated libraries at a Texas senior living community demonstrates how retired residents maintain vibrant literary resources while fostering community engagement through shared passion for reading.
Highland Springs, an Erickson Senior Living community in North Dallas, Texas, features a unique network of four miniature libraries known as the Book Nook, operated entirely by resident volunteers. The system offers an extensive collection of approximately 4,900 items including fiction, nonfiction, bestsellers, large-print books, audiobooks, periodicals, DVDs, and puzzles, with some shelves featuring works authored by community residents themselves.
The volunteer operation is coordinated through a steering committee comprising four head librarians, associate librarians, and administrator Katherine Young, one of the first retirees to move to Highland Springs in 2006. Each head librarian leads a committee for their specific Book Nook location, with committee sizes ranging from 12 to 31 volunteers. More than 70 dedicated residents contribute their time to keep shelves stocked and organized, demonstrating the significant community involvement in maintaining this literary resource.
Katherine Young, who worked with librarians during her career as a foreign service officer and director of a cultural center in Mumbai, India, emphasizes that library experience is not a requirement for volunteers. The volunteer team includes diverse professional backgrounds, from a former associate library director at University of Texas at Dallas to elementary school librarians, high school math teachers, and CPAs. The essential qualifications are organization skills, enjoyment of working with people, and most importantly, a love of books.
The Book Nook network utilizes a user-friendly online catalog system known as TinyCat to manage its extensive collection. The libraries focus exclusively on leisure reading materials, avoiding reference books, technical books, or textbooks. Each location specializes in specific types of materials, with some carrying more paperbacks, others more hardbacks, and three locations providing access to daily newspapers including The Wall Street Journal and The Dallas Morning News.
The collection remains current through generous donations from residents of gently used books and funds for purchasing new materials. Donations are processed in the Book Nook Annex storage room, where volunteers organize items based on specific criteria. Excess materials that cannot be used are either donated to local public libraries for their annual friends of the library sales or sold to Half Price Books to raise additional funds for the operation.
The volunteer system includes specialized roles such as Book Nook couriers who transport materials between the four locations, allowing residents to check out books from one location and return them to any other. Additional volunteers handle processing tasks including applying stickers and labels to new acquisitions. This comprehensive volunteer network demonstrates how retired communities can maintain sophisticated literary resources through shared passion and organized community effort.