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/