Public Libraries Seminar Discussion #5: Community Engagement and Strategic Planning
17 September 2024
“Libraries are at the heart of the communities they serve, and civic engagement is at the heart of where libraries are going in the 21st century. Moving from a community resource to a civic engagement leader is a logical step in the evolution of public libraries” (Urban Libraries Council, 2011).
Community engagement and strategic planning is a huge umbrella topic that can include library outreach, marketing and promotions, partnerships, digital services, consortiums and cooperatives, and more (de la Peña McCook & Bossaller, 2017). For our discussion board post, we chose to focus on Community Outreach and Partnerships. Community Engagement challenges us to think outside of the traditional walls of the library as a third place and meet our communities where they are to connect them with a variety of resources. Through community-led outreach and connecting with community partners, libraries can build trust and better serve their most marginalized and vulnerable community members.
This bibliography is organized into three key sections:
• Identifying and Building Community Partnerships
• Community-led Outreach and Engagement
• Outreach Evaluation and Assessment
After reviewing the resources, please answer the following questions:
• Choose a public library and identify what types of community outreach they engage in and what community groups they partner with. The library website may have an outreach page or you may have to search their social media or annual/Board of Trustees reports. What groups do they work with and what types of outreach do they do? If you cannot find that information, why do you think it’s not publicly available? Is it a positive or a negative to not have that information available?
• Using the same public library, identify a community group or organization that you think the library should partner with and explain why. Think about the underserved populations and groups we just covered in the Youth and Adult Services discussions!
Once again, CRRL has a wide variety of places its outreach and/or community partnerships umbrella covers across the region, and are not at all shy about highlighting those connections on its public platforms. Looking at the Library on the Go page, there is a general-purpose Youth Services programming van that makes regular stops at apartment communities, Grow-a-Reader storytime programs held at 18 preschools, 26 childcare facilities, and the Head Start programs, two weekly satellite locations in the southernmost and most rural parts of the region, regular visits to over a dozen assisted living facilities and senior apartments around Lake Anna, and regular appearances at major festivals and events whenever and wherever they happen for good measure (Central Rappahannock Regional Library, n.d.). There are very obvious benefits to having this information easily available—not least because it demonstrates a obvious impact to any stakeholders who might be curious about the library's reach, but because it gives the impression that any new, interested parties would be able to easily ask for outreach as well.
As wide a net it might be, there are still places CRRL would like to expand to. In the current strategic plan, the very first goal in the very first Strategic Priorities section, Community Outreach, is to "increase library usage and engagement among four identified underserved populations: individuals experiencing homelessness, teens, those in rural communities, and English as a second language (ESL) individuals" (Central Rappahannock Regional Library, 2022, p. 9).
When I originally conceptualized my post for this discussion, I wanted to focus on a partnership that, I'd figured was falling short. Since March 2023, the local Fredericksburg Department of Social Services (DSS) has been in reciprocal outreach with my branch of work, setting up shop near the front entrance two Wednesday a month to provide information about what the DSS can do to assist low income, unhoused, and veteran residents of the region (Fredericksburg Social Services, n.d., p. 2). According to our assistant branch manager, about 20 to 30 unhoused people pass through the branch every day we're open—lots of faces that I've come to recognize, and even a few that have evidently fallen into (and occasionally escaped!) homelessness in the two years I've worked there. Given that, it's obvious outreach at the Fredericksburg branch would the place to have the most impact, right?
Well, working the circulation desk right across the lobby, though, interest in the DSS's services from our regular unhoused patrons seems despairingly low—most days, the ladies staffing that table don't get more than 2 or 3 people to stop for information. To add salt on the wound, I'd never seen any of our regular visitors interact with the DSS for one reason or another, whether because they didn't trust governmental offices, or if they'd already tried what was on offer and hadn't seen any success, or something else. I'd always wondered why the partnership had kept going—but as my assistant branch manager informed me today, the DSS has gotten upwards of 156 different people connected to their services over their 30 months-partnership with the Fredericksburg branch. If you do the math, that averages to around 5 people a month, which might seem a little low as programming headcounts go, but in my assistant branch manager's words, the DSS is thrilled with the results they've been getting.
And plus, basing one's understanding of a library's impact on how high attendance can get may prove to be rather shortsighted. As Farrell and Mastel (2016) explain, the number of people that visit the library or participate in a program are not the end-all-be-all of demonstrating engagement, especially if that metric is in conflict with what specific strategic objectives a library has. The populations I focused on for my last couple discussion boards, special needs children and the incarcerated, are those facing numerous interlocking structural barriers that bar whatever outreach oriented towards them from reaching the attendance of your average program. Instead of focusing on mere numbers, then, CRRL would be able to continue providing the best outreach it can by by trying to foster meaningful relationships with the people that are able to participate.
References
Central Rappahannock Regional Library. (n.d.). Library on the Go. Retrieved September 14, 2024, from: https://www.librarypoint.org/library-go/
Central Rappahannock Regional Library. (2022). Strategic plan 2022-2027. https://www.librarypoint.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2023/03/Strategic-Plan-1.pdf
Farrell, S.L. & Mastel, K. (2016, May 4). Considering outreach assessment: strategies,
sample scenarios, and a call to action. In the Library with the Lead Pipe. https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2016/considering-outreach-assessment-strategies-sample-scenarios-and-a-call-to-action/
Fredericksburg Social Services (n.d.). FY 2023 Annual Report. https://www.fredericksburgva.gov/DocumentCenter/View/26205/Annual-Report-FY-2023