Engage Your Community

Grow community engagement with digital reading challenges that connect community members to library programming, resources, books, and each other.

Beanstack user profile pictures for student and family accounts
Masthead Waves

Create a Community Reading Culture

Get your community hooked on literature and books of all kinds with engaging reading challenges. Community members from kids to seniors are compelled to read—and read more—with the positive reinforcement and rewards built into our virtual reading programs.

Grow Usage of Public Library Services

With Beanstack, you can promote all your library services, programming, and resources in one place. Connect with more community members and see your usage soar.

  • Activity listing for Board Game Night at a public library

    Amplify Library Events

    Advertise an upcoming storytime, craft session, author talk, or other community event on your Beanstack homepage, in weekly emails, and within reading challenges' activity badges.

  • Reading challenge banner promoting Summer Book Club

    Digitize Library Programs

    Bring your existing community reading programs and literacy efforts, like reading groups and book clubs, online to make them accessible to everyone.

  • Reading challenge digital badge for visiting the 3D printer at a library

    Connect Library Resources

    Link to your databases, catalog, and digital tools to make Beanstack an online community hub. You can even create matching challenges to show off your library's storywalk or makerspace.

Increase Circulation of Your Collections

Connect readers to your book collections with personalized recommendation emails that integrate with your catalog, book lists for local authors and curated staff lists, and reading list challenges that help your community of readers find their new favorite author or big read.

Reading list of books for the Kids Staff Favorites reading challenge, including Ivy and Bean

Cultivate New Readership

Expand your public library's registration, readership, and engagement with a bigger virtual footprint. Our web and mobile apps help you engage with community members far and wide, and can also link them up to library card registration services to grow your base of cardholders.

Digital library card for Toronto Public Library

Sync Up With Your Local School or District

Link up with school partners so that students and classrooms can connect their school and public library accounts through our one-of-a-kind tandem connection service and participate in even more programming.

Learn About Tandems
Beanstack tandem account login screen for student library account linking to school  account

Support Literacy Year-Round

Offer yearlong, ongoing, and seasonal reading challenges to keep your literacy initiatives running around the clock. Beanstack makes it easy to expand your reading programs to winter, spring, and fall to keep your community members reading.

Involve the Whole Community

Turning early reading initiatives, family literacy programs, and book clubs into reading challenges helps you engage readers of all ages. When different generations read together, everyone benefits.

Lay a reading foundation for young kids with challenges featuring recommended picture books and early education strategies like playing and reading aloud.

Introduce varied book categories or one book reading challenges to engage older or reluctant readers to read outside their comfort zone.

Engage students in elementary school, middle school, and high school with high-quality reading content directly in reading challenges.

More than 10,000 public libraries and schools around the world use Beanstack to engage their communities, including the Department of Defense, Auckland Libraries, the Hawaii Department of Education, Ontario City Library, and the California Library Association.

Mobilize Community Reading

Boost your community's engagement with reading using our 4.7-star mobile app. Like a Fitbit for reading, the Beanstack mobile app makes a big impact on reading engagement: our data shows that mobile app readers log 18% more often, on average, than web-only participants.

Beanstack reading log and leaderboard tracker displayed on a mobile device screen

Unique Engagement Features

We closely study reader engagement to gamify our reading challenges and provide meaningful motivation to readers everywhere. From achievement badges and reading streaks to friends and leaderboards, we are always working to grow community reading and create strong readers.

Learn About Gamification
Digital badge with a trophy on it that is  earned for a 200 day reading streak

Set Community Reading Goals and Rewards

Galvanize your local readers around a shared reading mission with Beanstack. You can set and track progress toward a community goal, like 1 million minutes or 1,000 books, right alongside individual reading goals, and even highlight local organizations, a corporate sponsor, or a community partner.

Report on Your Impact

Gain access to on-demand reports that break down reading challenge participation and community engagement to help you find valuable insights about your public library's value and role in your community.

Learn About Data
Beanstack dashboard reading challenges library is participating in and total minutes and books reader completed

Ready to Learn More?

Get in touch to see how Beanstack can deepen reading engagement in your community.