Small and rural libraries don’t always have the same resources and opportunities that urban libraries do. But they still have big ideas about how to serve their communities—and, as we hear in Episode 98, they find ways to realize them.

At Burlingame (Kans.) Community Library, sensory spaces and a new loanable resource collection are improving the lives of patrons with disabilities and their families. Meanwhile, at North Liberty (Iowa) Library, staffers are moderating discussions on hot-button topics that are getting community members to open up, listen to one another, and connect.

Both libraries have received funding from the American Library Association’s Libraries Transforming Communities (LTC) grant program.

Learn more about LTC grant-funded projects throughout the US in “Libraries Transforming Communities, One Year Later,” published in the November/December 2024 issue of American Libraries.