Community
Overview
Belonging recognizes our commitment to and support of something larger than ourselves. We identify and recognize shared values, traditions, goals, and aspirations. Belonging requires transparency, accountability, participation, and collaboration. We feel welcomed, known, included, supported, and connected when we belong to a community.
Public libraries can play a key role in fostering belonging through:
- Asset Based Community Development
- Community Analysis
- Strategic Planning
- Advocacy & Storytelling
- Partnerships & Collaboration
- Programming
- Outreach
Why it Matters
Belonging strengthens the social fabric, creating responsive and resilient communities. In 2023, the Surgeon General of the US released a report about a new public health crisis: the epidemic of loneliness and isolation, which results in people feeling isolated, invisible, and insignificant. Small and rural libraries serve populations facing both geographic and social isolation. Public libraries are community anchors, serving as community convenors and creating opportunities for connection and a culture of belonging.
As integral Third Places – informal spaces where random and intentional in-person relationships occur – public libraries have a role in creating culturally responsive programming and partnerships to encourage relationship-driven trust building.
Foundation
Use the Pathways Tracking Document to document your learning journey.
Community: Each person defines community. Pairs come up with different definitions, but as a group, they create one encompassing definition of community.
Common Ground Activity - In a group, you have to find 5 common things among everyone. Could be a hobby enjoyed, a restaurant all have visited. How long did it take to find common ground? How to scale that up to working with patrons?
Alphabet Photo Challenge - While walking through the town/ neighborhood/ city of the library, individuals or teams have to find something that starts with every letter of the alphabet. Discussion after a given time of observations, stores, and people encountered.
ALA’s Ask Activity
Asset Based Community Development
By utilizing Asset Based Community Development to recognize our communities' strengths and possibilities, we can shape our stories. Instead of focusing on obstacles and challenges, we examine how to tap into the skills, creativity, and expertise of individuals, institutions, associations, businesses, and even the existing shared spaces and places. When we do so, we reveal the existing network of social ties and relationships and how to best work with our community to leverage them for the benefit of all.
Community Analysis
1. Use Census Data to paint a broad picture of who’s in your community. Compare to representation who uses library resources. Record a general overview of who’s in your community and use your library on the Community Assessment Form.
Resources
Elements to consider: Age breakdowns, poverty numbers, ethnicities, languages spoken, and any other elements to better understand the population.
2. Conduct a Community Analysis and record findings. Describe your community (geography, demographics, and defining characteristics):
- Identify key issues facing your community
- Identify trends impacting the community and inform library service
- Where do the priorities of the community intersect with the work of the library?
- What did you assume that was true, and what surprised you?
Resources
- Assessing Community Needs and Resources
- Understanding and Describing the Community
- Identifying Community Assets and Resources
- SOAR Analysis - Action Guide for Reevaluating Your Library PFD
- Asset Based Community Development
- 211.org – resources and services in your zip code – for asset map
3. Seek out and/or attend one or more from the list below. These community sources of information can add to your understanding the community's needs. Respond to what you found on the tracking document. What did you assume that was true, and what surprised you?
- Read local government’s strategic plans
- Attend local board meetings - check website and social media for times
- Read local board minutes
- Attend community development plans
- Attend town hall meetings
- Attend community meetings
- Attend governance meetings
- Check media (traditional and digital)
Resources
- 9 Tips for Town Hall Meetings
- Harwood Institute (Ask, Aspirations, Community Rhythms)
- Of, By, For All (Partner Power Exercise)
** Find additional actions to go deeper in the Continuing Journey Section**
Strategic Plan
1. Review the library strategic plan and identify specific ways the community is identified.
2. If your organization does not have a strategic plan or has an out-of-date plan ( more than five years old), consider how you would integrate community into planning. Record how the community should be included in the plan.
3. Contact elected officials, leaders of not-for-profit organizations, and small business owners to share the community element of your strategic plan. Record any suggestions or clarification needed from the meeting.
Resources
- Area Mayor/ Supervisor email or phone
- Leaders of community not-for-profits email or phone
- Small business owner's email or phone
- Writing a Cold Contact Email (Harvard Business Review)
- Identifying Community Assets and Resources
** Find additional actions to go deeper in the Continuing Journey Section**
Advocacy
1. As a staff, define advocacy and what it currently looks like for the library. Identify current advocates of the library. Questions to consider: What do library advocates do? Who should be a library advocate?
Resources
- ALA Library Advocate’s Handbook
- ALA Public Policy & Advocacy
- Webjunction: Advocacy in Action
- EveryLibrary Institute webinar "Fundamentals of Library Advocacy."
2. Create a packet, flyer, or digital component listing all the great things your library does for the community. Use this packet to recruit an advocacy network (see #3 under continuing journey). Include services, stats, and needs.
Resources
3. Develop a library message: Create an elevator pitch and a longer message for large audiences. Develop your talking points.
What data, examples, and stories support your key messages? Anticipate questions or comments and use the talking points to elaborate on your key messages. As you develop your talking points, be aware of your audience, their priorities, and how these talking points connect your messages to issues they care about. You may choose to emphasize certain talking points with specific audiences.
- Key messages, elevator pitches, and messages developed for specific audiences
- Use community priorities in library message
Resources
** Find additional actions to go deeper in the Continuing Journey Section**
Partnerships
1. List out your library’s current partnerships. Looking at the list, identify any gaps that you might see in the services they provide and the audiences they serve. Use your asset map to see where the gaps are. For instance, do your partners represent the unique and different needs of the groups within your community?
Resources
- Webjunction: https://www.webjunction.org/explore-topics/partnerships.html
- Urban Libraries Council Strategic Guide: The Leaders Library Card Challenge: Creating High-Level Partnerships to Improve Education Outcomes
- Infobase: Marketing Your Library Through Community Partnerships
- Programming Librarian: Better Programs, Deeper Impacts, and Expanded Capacities: What Makes Library Partnerships Valuable
- Partnerships: A Critical Element for Libraries by Jessica Dorr, Martha Choe, and Kara Hannigan
- Characteristics of Successful Partnerships Between Libraries, Schools, and Community Agencies by Carol A. Brown
2. Identify the strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results of your organization so that you can share this information with potential partners. They will want to know what your library can bring. Create a flyer or way to share this information
Resources
- Massachusetts Library System SOAR Process & Brainstorming Rules and SOAR Exercise Chart
- Webjunction "Exploring the SOAR Model" Webinar & Resources
- Aspen Institute "Rising to the Challenge: Re-Envisioning Public Libraries"
- Free Library of Philadelphia Skills for Community-Centered Libraries Curriculum
- Understanding and Describing the Community
3. Attend an event held by a different organization that serves a marginalized group in your community; invite representatives from organizations to your library. What did you learn from the event, and how did the library visit go?
Resources
- Connect with local Community Foundation and United Ways to find local organizations
- Read newspapers for events
- Visit local area Facebook pages for local events
** Find additional actions to go deeper in the Continuing Journey Section**
Outreach
1. Inventory current outreach programs, events, and efforts. What part of your community do you most regularly reach out to? What organizations do you currently work with? How often is the library outside the library walls by attending events?
2. Based on the Outreach inventory, create a list of:
- Organizations in the community to reach out to that the library does not currently work with
- Leaders of those organizations
- Community events the library does not attend (yet)
3. Pick one organization that the library does not currently work with, and reach out to them. Offer a list or brochure of library services, invite them to meet in person to explore a partnership, or invite them to an event.
Resources
4. Review how you promote library services to the community. List all the avenues used to get the word out, such as newspapers, social media, newsletters, etc. How else can you consider getting the word out about the library to all community members, not just those who use the library?
Resources:
- Guerilla Marketing Tips
- How to Measure the Results on your Social Media
- 4 Simple Ways to Beef Up your Library Marketing (Video)
- Innovative Approaches To Market Your Library
5. Identify a group of the community not using your library. Reach out to specially invite members of that group to a program, or to come to the library. Who did you invite, and what was the response or feedback?
** Find additional actions to go deeper in the Continuing Journey Section**
In Practice
Library: Benedek Memorial Library, Savona, Steuben County, NY
Population: 827
The Benedek Memorial Library was able to offer book clubs in partnership with the nonprofit agency Pro Action of Steuben and Yates as part of its Summer Read Plus Program through funding from a DEI Microgrant from the Southern Tier Library System. The book clubs were designed to offer books by diverse authors to youth and young adults in a setting where participants could read and discuss issues arising from the reading. Many parents looked at and read the books the youth were reading, as well, expanding the program to adult participants. Books that were read and discussed included New Kid by Jerry Kraft, Tidesong by Wendy Xu, and Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook, Ko Hyung-Ju, and Ryan Estrada. As Library Director Candy Wilson noted, "Allowing and encouraging parents and adults to read what the younger people were reading exposed them to DEI material without pushing the material. In the Summer Read Plus, adults who would never read the manga genre learned that they could enjoy it. We look forward to keeping the book clubs going throughout the year."
Community Analysis
1. Start conducting a more in-depth picture of your community. Pick and complete one or more of the following:
- Community audit
- Community survey
- Community Asset Map
Resources
- Community Audits
- Library User Survey Templates and How-Tos
- Library Surveys for Success – webinar recording
- Assessing Community Needs and Resources
- Community Asset Mapping General Outline
2. Host a Community Needs event and facilitate a conversation that welcomes everyone to participate. Invite specific organizations and populations to attend.
Resources
- Leading Conversations in Small and Rural Libraries
- Accessible Conversations in Small and Rural Libraries
- Community Conversations Across Neighborhoods
- Master Cold Invites
3. Identify the community's needs from the survey, audit, and conversations. What areas can the library support? New Services, programs, or changing the library's layout?
Strategic Plan
1. Host a community meeting to share the reviewed and approved strategic plan. Invite identified key community members. Record feedback on the strategic plan. What suggestions were given?
Resources
Advocacy
1. Develop a local advocacy plan
- Name your primary audience
- Who makes the decision?
- Who influences this audience?
- Name your secondary audience (if applicable)
- Who makes the decision?
- Who influences this audience?
- Why does achieving your goal matter to them and their constituencies?
Resources
- Webjunction: Advocacy in Action
- Advocacy Plan Workbook - ALA Committee on Library Advocacy (worksheet exercises)
- ALA's Board Survey Worksheet - to track relationships your key advocates already have in place
- Illinois Library Association "Ready, Set, Advocate: Library Advocacy Toolkit"
- ALA Advocacy Storytelling 101: "Getting Your Library Story in Local News"
2. Build a library advocacy network.- Intentionally seek out advocates from marginalized groups or diverse backgrounds. Who do you want supporting library efforts, what information do they need, and what specific actions can they take?
- ALA's Checklist for Reaching Out
- ALA's How to Conduct a Virtual Library Tour
- ALA The State of America's Libraries 2023
- United for Libraries "A Power Guide for Successful Advocacy"
Partnerships
1. Conduct community asset mapping to learn what organizations exist that may be able to help you fill the gaps in your existing partnerships.
2. See to partner with a community organization serving a portion of the community you seek to strengthen your connection with to offer a new program. Who was your partner, and what program was developed?
Resources
- Better Programs, Deeper Impacts, and Expanded Capacities
- Health, Media, and More: What Partners Help Libraries Do
3. Join a community-wide human services committee and network with representatives from organizations serving marginalized groups. What are you learning from this committee, and what library services can be promoted?
We know you do great work everyday. Please take a moment to share your story.