Ask, Listen, Empower: Grounding Your Library Work in Community Engagement

by Mary Davis Fournier (Editor), Ostman Sarah (Editor)

Overview

Foreword by Tracie D. Hall

Community engagement isn’t simply an important component of a successful library—it’s the foundation upon which every service, offering, and initiative rests. Working collaboratively with community members—be they library customers, residents, faculty, students or partner organizations— ensures that the library works, period. This important resource from ALA’s Public Programs Office (PPO) provides targeted guidance on how libraries can effectively engage with the public to address a range of issues for the betterment of their community, whether it is a city, neighborhood, campus, or something else. Featuring contributions by leaders active in library-led community engagement, it’s designed to be equally useful as a teaching text for LIS students and a go-to handbook for current programming, adult services, and outreach library staff. Balancing practical tools with case studies and stories from field, this collection explores such key topics as

• why libraries belong in the community engagement realm;
• getting the support of board and staff;
• how to understand your community;
• the ethics and challenges of engaging often unreached segments of the community;
• identifying and building engaged partnerships;
• collections and community engagement;
• engaged programming; and
• outcome measurement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780838948323
Publisher:	American Library Association
Publication date:	01/08/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	540,293
File size:	914 KB

About the Author

Mary Davis Fournier is Deputy Director of the American Library Association's Public Programs Office where she specializes in national partnerships, new project development, and programs support for public, school and academic libraries. An experienced arts administrator and cultural programmer, her past experiences include directing Chicago’s Printers Row Book Fair (now Lit Fest), programming for the Miami Book Fair International. She is active in Chicago’s nonprofit community and currently co-chairs the board of Chicago Women in Philanthropy. She holds a M.Ed. in Education Policy Studies from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and a B.A. in History and English Literature from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

Sarah Ostman is the communications manager in the American Library Association’s Public Programs Office, where she serves as editor of ProgrammingLibrarian.org, a web resource for library professionals. Before joining the ALA and the library field in 2014, she spent nearly a decade as a newspaper reporter, editor, and freelance writer. Ostman has an MA in journalism from Columbia College in Chicago and a BA in sociology and theater from Smith College in Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Cover Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Democracy, Community, and Libraries 2. Empowering Communities: From Public Trust to Impact 3. I’m Listening: Reimagining the Book Club Model 4. Partnering for Greater Impact 5. Respect and Compromise Aid School-City Partnership 6. Community-Centered Programming: Tools and Techniques 7. Ethical and Inclusive Community Engagement 8. Culture Shift: The Path to Becoming Community-Centered 9. Empowering Volunteers to Build Community 10. Civil Rights Center; Community Engagement and Special Collections 11. Strategic Planning through Community LIstening 12. Building Public Trust: It Starts with the Individual Resources Contributors Index

Editorial Reviews

"Valuable and insightful ... Library workers and potential community partners will find the book’s many examples of programming, adult services, and outreach useful for moving from dialogue to action.”
— Library Journal

"Readers ... will find the chapters inspiring and the examples of programs useful to their own work in a library or their research on diversity and inclusion in libraries. There is so much rich content for the reader: specific examples, guidelines, rubrics, and stories of success. Individual chapters, and as a collection, it has a lot to offer all of us working toward meaningful, sincere, and long-lasting engagement with the communities in our catchment areas.”
— International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion

"A refreshing overview of community engagement for libraries, with a focus on practical case studies and guidelines."
— Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association

"As Tracie Hall (executive director of ALA) writes in the foreword, community engagement involves the library effectively advocating 'for the community and their interests to bring attention to their strength and struggles” ... Recommended for any library interested in expanding its reach into and servicing its communities.”
— Choice

From the Publisher

07/01/2021

In this valuable and insightful collection of articles, compiled by Fornier and Ostman (both of the ALA), contributors who work in a variety of institutions, from public libraries to the archives of a civil rights center, offer guidance on community engagement. Hadiya Evans examines Denver Public Library's R.A.D.A. (Read. Awareness. Dialogue. Action.) series, a social justice book club created to discuss police brutality, mental health, immigration, and other issues. Ellen Knutson and Quanetta Batts consider the roles of ethics and inclusion, and stress the importance of being aware of power and privilege. Cindy Fesemyer explores partnerships and advises librarians to create a visual map of their community to find organizations to collaborate with, such as library groups or specific community populations. Throughout the book, librarians are encouraged to work with their community rather than simply serving it. An extensive list of resources is included. VERDICT Library workers and potential community partners will find the book's many examples of programming, adult services, and outreach useful for moving from dialogue to action.—Susan Belsky, Oshkosh P.L., WI

Library Journal