Community services librarian Ziba Perez Zehdar (MS ’12) is going mobile with the Long Beach Public Library (LBPL), and we’re not talking about a digital app. She leads several community engagement projects at multiple branch libraries and outside the library.
Zehdar oversees the library’s makerspace, which includes a physical space at the Main Library called The Studio. One of her first tasks after joining the system in October 2015 was to take the makerspace mobile. She now manages mobile makerspace resources that can pop up at any one of the system’s twelve branches. She also oversees makerspace programming and a small staff of creatives and tech industry specialists who work with patrons at The Studio.
This fall, Zehdar is launching a new mobile service point for the library in the form of a traveling librarian with a bicycle-based collection. In addition to sharing a rolling print collection, LBPL librarians will help people sign up for library cards and offer reference services and database training on the go.
“The intention is to reach the groups I don’t see using the library,” said Zehdar, “to really spread the knowledge of the library . . . . We want to go to the people.”
The project is funded by the Knight Foundation and 8 80 Cities, which selected Zehdar to join the 2016 cohort of Emerging City Champions. As Champions, she and nineteen other young people from across the country carry out projects that “strengthen mobility, improve public spaces, and enhance civic engagement in their cities.”
Back at her home branch, the Main Library, Zehdar manages LBPL’s zine collection, California’s only circulating zine collection in a public library. Among the collection is her own zine, ZebraPizza, which she coauthors with fiancé and fellow LBPL staffer Jon-o Gazdecki. ZebraPizza’s eighth volume will be shared with guests at their nuptials in January 2017. The zine is published by ¡Three Amigos Press!, which Zehdar created to publish and distribute the first volume.
Zehdar has been involved in several zine fests and comic cons as a participant, author, and organizer. She is currently collaborating with zine distributor Darcy Crash Distro to plan LBPL’s first on-site zine fest, Zine Queens Vol. 2: The Library is Open, which will be held on November 26.
Follow Zehdar on Twitter (@iluvlibraries) and keep up with the latest from ¡Three Amigos Press! on Tumblr.