When Melbourne’s Yarra Plenty regional libraries first went into lockdown in March, shut their doors, and left the remaining unborrowed books on their shelves, staff were sent home with a phone. “One of the hardest things about lockdown was people being separated from their community,” said Lisa Dempster, Yarra Plenty’s executive manager of public participation. “The library is often a hub for the community, and we identified the most vulnerable cohort of our community would be the elderly.” So the library staff pulled from their database the phone number of every library member over the age of 70—a total of 8,000 records. Then the librarians started calling those members. All of them. “We called them to say hi, see how they were doing, and then see if there was anything they needed help with, such as access to services, counseling support, tech help, that kind of thing. We would then refer them to a service that would help them,” said Dempster. “What we’ve found mostly is that people are really up for the chat and love getting that call from the librarian. Some calls go for five minutes and some go for half an hour or more.” The phone-banking librarians at Yarra Plenty got through to all of their elderly members during the first lockdown. Now, with Melbourne in its second lockdown and its harshest level yet, they’re moving through the whole list again—making a total of 16,000 calls. Librarians tend to be very engaged with their community over the long term, Dempster said, with patrons often getting to know their librarians quite well, which means the extra outreach effort is often very welcome. “We’ve got librarians who speak different languages, such as Greek, Italian, and Chinese. So we’re really trying to reach the people who might not be connected to other modes of support,” she said. “Our librarians have been really enjoying it. They just embraced it.”