Project Forward

This project is a perfect fit for me because I have been developing my Librarian Organizer training program for about 7 months now and I’ve spent a lot of time exploring how community organizing can strengthen public libraries. This assignment gives me an opportunity to take those ideas a step further by developing a practical strategy for putting them into action which is really exciting! As part of the assignment, I am preparing for the program to be piloted at a real public library that I am very familiar with her in San Diego. I access this particular library frequently as a patron and I have studied it extensively from many different angles for different classes in this program. It adds a little extra challenge but I think it’s a good exercise because it is my goal to launch this program for real one day. My inspiration for the Librarian Organizer concept comes from years of union and political organizing experience marrying with my love for public libraries and information institutions and recognizing how powerful they can and should be in our communities.

 

Building stronger public libraries through relationships, participation, and community leadership

Implementation Period: 12 months

Proposed Institution: San Diego Public Library (SDPL)

Pilot Location: City Heights/Weingart Branch Library

 

Innovation Overview: The Librarian Organizer Program

I have talked before in my posts about developing a Librarian Organizer Program and I think this innovation strategy provides an opportunity to turn those ideas into something that could realistically be implemented in a public library. The concept is relatively simple: Libraries don’t need more marketing; They need organizing.

Public libraries provide extraordinary educational resources, technology, programming, and community spaces but many residents remain unaware of these opportunities or face barriers that prevent them from participating. Rather than waiting for people to discover the library passively, I propose training librarians to become active community organizers who build relationships with the people and organizations in the neighborhoods they serve. The program would begin as a 12 month pilot at the San Diego Public Library’s City Heights/Weingart Branch.

The primary objectives would be to increase community participation, develop lasting partnerships with neighborhood organizations, and encourage residents to become active contributors to library programming and services. I want to move beyond the idea of libraries providing services to communities and toward a model where communities actively participate in shaping their libraries.

 

Mission and Institutional Context: Why This Innovation, Now?

The San Diego Public Library’s mission is “to inspire lifelong learning through connections to knowledge and each other” (San Diego Public Library, n.d.). I think the second half of that statement is especially important because it recognizes that libraries are not just about providing information they are also about connecting people.

I did an in-depth study for a class recently of SDPL’s 2023 Library Master Plan which emphasizes equitable access, community engagement, and adapting library services to changing community needs. More than 11,000 San Diegans participated in developing that plan (City of San Diego, 2023) so we are off to a good start with community engagement before the pilot ever launches. I propose beginning the Librarian Organizer Program at the City Heights/Weingart Branch which serves one of San Diego’s most culturally diverse neighborhoods and is a branch I visit frequent. It provides public computers, educational programming, creative resources, and community gathering spaces. City Heights is a promising setting to test a more relationship based approach to community engagement. The Librarian Organizer Program would build upon SDPL’s existing work while providing a more structured approach to community involvement. Libraries have reached a point where offering excellent services is not enough, they must actively build relationships with residents, understand the conditions affecting their communities, and invite people to participate in the institution’s future.

 

Action Brief Statements

Action Brief: Community Members

Convince community residents, especially those who do not regularly use the library, that by connecting with Librarian Organizers and participating in library activities they will discover that their public library is more than a place for books. It is a community institution where they can learn, build relationships, access resources, and influence the services available to them, because public libraries exist to serve and strengthen their communities.

 

Action Brief: Library Staff

Convince library staff that by learning and practicing community organizing techniques they can develop stronger relationships with residents, better understand community needs, and increase meaningful participation in library services, because successful public libraries are built through relationships, trust, and community involvement.

 

Implementation Strategy & Roadmap

I think this phased approach reflects the central lesson of Taming Technolust and Technoplans vs. Technolust: innovation should respond to actual community needs rather than simply introducing something new for the sake of innovation.

Guidelines & Policies

The Librarian Organizer Program would introduce new responsibilities for participating librarians, so clear guidelines and institutional support would be essential.

 

Proposed guidelines:

Community engagement: Librarian Organizers would conduct regular neighborhood visits, one-on-one conversations, and meetings with community organizations.

Ethics and intellectual freedom: All organizing activities would uphold professional library ethics, privacy, intellectual freedom, and equitable access. Community advocacy would focus on library services and public needs.

Accessibility and inclusion: Engagement opportunities would be accessible to residents regardless of language, disability, income, or familiarity with library services.

Staff responsibilities: Participating librarians would receive dedicated work hours for organizing activities rather than having these responsibilities added to their existing workload.

Community accountability: Residents would have meaningful opportunities to recommend programs, identify unmet needs, and participate in decisions affecting library services.

Privacy and consent: Community conversations would be documented only as necessary, with clear consent procedures and safeguards for personal information.

Note: Library leadership, branch managers, frontline staff, city representatives, and community stakeholders would help develop and approve these, and possibly more, guidelines.

 

Timeline for Implementation

I would recommend a 12 month pilot rather than immediately expanding the program throughout the library system. This would provide opportunities for experimentation, evaluation, and adjustments before making a larger institutional commitment.

 

Marketing & Promotion

One of the defining features of this program is that traditional marketing would become secondary to relationship building. Trust precedes participation, people engage because of relationships, not posters. Traditional promotional methods would still play a supporting role as they do in community organizing but the most important communication would happen through direct personal interactions.

 

Internal promotion:

Introduce the program through staff meetings, workshops, and presentations to library leadership and explain how community organizing supports SDPL’s mission and existing outreach services. Share early successes and encourage staff feedback throughout the pilot.

 

External community engagement:

Establish relationships with neighborhood associations, schools, faith organizations, labor groups, nonprofits, and local businesses. Attend existing neighborhood meetings and community events and conduct listening sessions in accessible community spaces. Use library newsletters, social media, multilingual flyers, and community partners’ communication networks to support personal outreach. The central message would be simple: Your library belongs to your community and your voice matters in shaping its future.

 

Staff Training & Readiness

Staff preparation would be the most important component of this program because community organizing requires a number of skills that are not emphasized in traditional library education. I propose training a small group of interested librarians with support from branch leadership and experienced community organizers.

Training topics would include:

• One-on-one conversations and active listening.
• Community mapping and identifying neighborhood leaders.
• Building relationships with community organizations.
• Facilitating meetings and encouraging participation.
• Understanding community needs and barriers to access.
• Developing community led programming.
• Ethical considerations and professional boundaries.

Training would combine workshops, roleplaying, neighborhood visits, and ongoing mentorship. Staff would also receive the organizing field guide, conversation templates, community mapping worksheets, and evaluation tools.

Librarians would need dedicated time to perform this work. If organizing is going to become part of library service it must be treated as a professional responsibility rather than an optional activity. It takes a significant amount of time and effort to train effective organizers, that training must translate into positive organizing metrics for the library.

 

Evaluation & Future Expansion

I think one of the most important changes this program could introduce is how libraries measure successful community engagement. Traditional metrics such as circulation, attendance, and library card registrations are valuable but they do not necessarily measure the strength of relationships between libraries and their communities.

The Librarian Organizer Program would introduce additional measures focused on meaningful participation.

Proposed first year benchmarks:

• Conduct at least 100 meaningful one-on-one community conversations.
• Establish 10 ongoing partnerships with community organizations.
• Develop at least three programs designed collaboratively with residents.
• Document increased participation among residents who previously had limited involvement with the library.
• Gather community feedback through listening sessions, interviews, and accessible surveys.

These are preliminary targets that would be reviewed after the initial assessment. Evaluation would also include qualitative stories demonstrating how the program has affected people’s relationships with the library. A neighborhood organization might become a regular programming partner or residents who previously felt disconnected from the library might begin participating in planning discussions.

Findings would be shared with staff, library leadership, and community participants. If successful, the program could expand to additional SDPL branches with training materials and procedures adapted to each neighborhood’s particular needs.

 

Conclusion: Building Libraries with Communities

I think the Librarian Organizer Program represents an opportunity to rethink what innovation in public libraries can look like. Innovation does not always require new technology, expensive equipment, or renovated buildings, sometimes it means changing how we approach the work we already do. Public libraries are already important centers for education, information, creativity, and civic life but their long term success depends on the relationships they build with the communities around them. My hope is that the Librarian Organizer Program will help libraries move beyond inviting people through their doors and toward becoming active participants in neighborhood life

By investing in relationships, developing community leadership, and giving residents a meaningful voice in library services, we can build public libraries that do more than survive, we can build libraries that thrive, because their communities are actively involved in making them successful.

 

References

City of San Diego. (2023). Library master plan: More than words, a community vision. https://www.sandiego.gov/public-library/about-the-library/library-master-plan

San Diego Public Library. (n.d.). About the library. City of San Diego. https://www.sandiego.gov/public-library/about-the-library

San Diego Public Library. (n.d.). City Heights/Weingart Library. City of San Diego. https://www.sandiego.gov/public-library/locations/city-heights-weingart-library-and-performance-annex

San Diego Public Library. (n.d.). IDEA Labs. City of San Diego. https://www.sandiego.gov/public-library/idea

For my post last week on Hyperlinked Communities, I discussed how relationships, participation, and shared experiences help build stronger communities. For this week’s “choose your adventure” I am looking at Hyperlinked Public Libraries, where we can see how those ideas can be put into practice. A number of examples from this week’s links demonstrate how libraries are moving beyond their traditional roles and creating new opportunities for people to learn, create, collaborate, and connect with one another.

I particularly enjoyed the Noise Closet at Chattanooga Public Library, which allows young people to borrow musical instruments, including guitars, keyboards, and drums (Chattanooga Public Library, n.d.). I think this is a great example of a library recognizing a community need and finding a creative way to address it. Musical instruments can be expensive and providing access to them removes an economic barrier that might otherwise prevent someone from exploring their interests. I remember how cool it was to play an instrument as a kid, I played trombone in middle school and I am sad I gave it up.

The Hive at Spokane Public Library provides creative spaces, artist residencies, and opportunities for community members to gather and collaborate (Spokane Public Library, n.d.). What I find to be the coolest thing about The Hive is that participating artists provide public programming in exchange for studio space. This creates a relationship where the community isn’t simply receiving services but actively contributing to what the library offers.

What stands out about these examples is how they challenge our traditional understanding of what a public library should look like. A hyperlinked public library isn’t just offering new technologies or innovative programs it is a library that understands its community, recognizes its needs, and creates opportunities for meaningful participation. I think this connects directly to last week’s discussion about Hyperlinked Communities. If strong communities are built through relationships and shared experiences, libraries should be actively creating environments where those relationships can develop.

My professional goal is to encourage librarians to move beyond traditional outreach and become active participants in the communities they serve. That means building relationships with community organizations, listening to residents, identifying barriers to participation, and involving people in developing library services.

I believe the long term success of public libraries depends on the strength of their relationships with their communities. When people feel connected to their library and have a role in shaping its future they become more than patrons they become partners, participants, and advocates. I think that is what makes the hyperlinked public library such an important model for discussion when it comes to the future of librarianship.

As I continue developing my Librarian Organizer program alongside my other studies at San Jose State, this week’s Hyperlinked Library focus on community has helped me sharpen some of my ideas about what the role of a librarian organizer should actually look like in practice. I think relatedness, relationship building, and trust need to be at the heart of the Librarian Organizer model and those were central themes in the Hyperlinked Communities Module we recently explored.

Something I got to really thinking about this week is about what library outreach looks like from the perspective of community members. Traditional library outreach can be too transactional, we attend a community event, set up a table, hand out information about library programs, and hope people eventually walk through our doors, but that feels too passive to be effective and librarian organizers should take that work further. Instead of only asking, “How can I tell people about what the library offers?” we should also be asking, “Who makes up this community? What matters to them? Who do they already trust? How can the library become a meaningful part of those relationships?” This requires librarians to spend time outside the library, listen to people, and develop lasting partnerships with schools, nonprofits, neighborhood organizations, cultural groups, faith communities, labor organizations, and other any other reputable community institutions they can find! When I was a labor organizer, I recognized that every person in the community was a potential union member if I just connected them to the mission of the union in a way that was meaningful to them. I feel like it is very similar here when talking about libraries and community relations.

For anyone who is interested in what’s inspired me from this section, there are few readings in particular that I really enjoyed. Jennifer Dixon’s discussion of convening community conversations emphasizes the library’s ability to bring people together for dialogue and highlights the importance of reaching beyond the people who already use the library (Dixon, 2017). That idea connects directly to organizing. We cannot claim to understand or represent a community if we only interact with the people who already participate.

There was also a piece that I found very useful because it highlights something I know, but keep too far in the back of my mind and need to center more when thinking about the librarian organizer. Loida Garcia-Febo’s discussion of “serving with love” helped me think about the human side of the Librarian Organizer program. She emphasizes qualities such as empathy, compassion, understanding, inclusiveness, and relationship building as essential elements of library service (Garcia-Febo, 2018). These are also essential organizing skills. A librarian organizer listens before proposing solutions, establishes trust before asking people to participate, and maintains a presence in the community rather than appearing only when the library wants something.

I’d like to mention a reading on technology too because the rate of tech expansion and its impacts on daily life are undeniable and require our attention. When it comes to organizing and community, new technology can provide additional opportunities for us to make connections, particularly within a hyperlinked library, but it cannot replace earned relationships. As danah boyd (2016) argues, technology does not automatically eliminate existing inequalities and can instead reproduce or amplify them. Digital tools should therefore support community relationships rather than become substitutes for them.

The idea of the hyperlinked community reinforces my belief that librarians cannot simply wait inside the library for the community to come to us. We need to be present where people already gather, build partnerships with organizations they already trust, listen to the conversations already taking place, and create both physical and digital opportunities for connection. In this way outreach becomes much more than promoting library services, it becomes the ongoing work of building relationships, creating relatedness, strengthening community connections, and weaving the library into the fabric of the community itself; This is what I see as the heart of the Librarian Organizer program.

 

References

boyd, d. (2016, October 27). What world are we building? Data and Society: Points.             https://medium.com/datasociety-points/what-world-are-we-building-9978495dd9ad

Dixon, J. (2017). Convening community conversations: Libraries as leaders in community          engagement. Library Journal. https://287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/CONVENING_COMMUNITY_CONVERSATI.pdf

Garcia-Febo, L. (2018, November 1). Serving with love: Embedding empathy in the work of  libraries. American Libraries. https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2018/11/01/serving- with-love/