Do you ever have visitors to your library who have expressed interest in giving tours? Perhaps they want to create a walking tour for their vacation. Or they want to set up a tour to show their extended family the best sites of the town or city. Maybe they are fledgling tour guides who need help starting their businesses. Or they could be students who have an assignment to cobble together a meaningful tour. Or teachers who have a theme for their tour that ties into their course (a nature tour, a tour of local Art Deco or Victorian architecture, a regional genealogy-based tour, and so on).
There are many reasons why patrons would approach their library for resources necessary to make tour itineraries. You can help them access materials, make use of appropriate technology, and perhaps even publicize their tours.
I have created a variety of walking, biking, and motor vehicle tours for parts of New York City, and my local and central libraries have been very good places for accessing certain materials. A few times I did ask librarians for assistance, and I have thought of other ways in which they could help out people in my situation.
What kind of walking or bike tour should you create?
- Help patrons think of how to tailor and target the tour they are creating. Is it for a family vacation or reunion event? For a class or course they are teaching or taking as a student? For a religious group, bike club, business venture, etc.? Ask a few general questions to aid the library patrons so they can focus on which sites would be of interest to them.
- Suggest to patrons that they have a theme for their tours. Are they creating a type of food tour (sampling pizza, bagels, hoagies, donuts, etc.)? An architectural tour? Houses of worship? Public art and monuments? Of course, some patrons may just want to make a general tour, an Introduction to My Town type of tour. As a librarian, you may be able to suggest books, magazines, and media that would help patrons conduct meaningful research for their tours.
What kind of materials do tour guides need?
- Show patrons to the travel section of the library. Many patrons may not be familiar with it because they are used to buying such books in stores (and they may be surprised that there isn’t a “Travel” section, but there are books in the 910-917 section). Even if they cannot find a guide for their exact location, encourage the patrons to model their tours on something offered by one of your shelved guides.
- Does your library have a table with free giveaway maps of the local transit system? Bus or train maps? These can be helpful for patrons, especially because of the visual layouts presented. As for bike maps, New York City and Portland, Oregon are just two cities that publish bike lane maps, which can be very helpful for patrons devising bike tours in their cities.
How should tour guides prepare?
- Tell your budding tour guides that there are many helpful websites that can provide models for their walking and biking tours. If they are hoping to compile a walking tour in Washington, here is one such website: 20 Self-Guided Washington DC Walking Tours | Maps (freetoursbyfoot.com). The National Parks Service website is an excellent resource and example of a government website for tours.
- Show patrons how to use Google Maps, Mapquest, Waze, Maps.me, and other map-planning sites and apps. This isn’t second nature to everyone, especially older library patrons and young students. But they will see how they can make an agenda and a route that is feasible for their touring needs.
- If your city or town has an agency that licenses tour guides, be in touch with them about the tests and qualifications necessary for someone who wants to make touring a professional endeavor. For instance, in NYC the agency known as DCWP (Department of Consumer and Worker Protection) offers the Sightseeing Guide License. If someone wants to be a volunteer tour guide, some cities and regions have courses for this. You can recommend these to library patrons.
Making and leading tours are wonderful activities that many people would like to do, and libraries can certainly help them on their way to fashioning interesting and satisfying tours by foot, bike, and motor vehicle.