Hopefully Hyperlinked: A Work in Progress

In May of 2025 I attended my first library conference, the Massachusetts Library Association’s annual conference. One topic in particular interested me and left me with an interaction that I won’t soon forget. The title of the presentation was “Indigenizing the Library,” and the speaker talked about her culture and the history of indigenous cultures in America. She then related that to libraries and library work, and the need for libraries to consider indigenous culture in their collections, programs, and services. When it came time for questions, one member of the audience asked about how to reach people who don’t know the library is available to them. A local library director answered the question by saying “meet them where they are.” That phrase really stuck with me. I think part of her point was that librarians and libraries are so focused on bringing people through the doors and into the library that they forget to go out to the community and meet those who they serve in their own spaces. She was also saying that there might be some members of the community who don’t feel comfortable walking into the library for various reasons, whether it’s a language barrier, old overdue fines that they can’t pay, negative experiences with the staff in the past, or any other reason. It’s our job, our responsibility, to let the entire community know that they are not only welcome, but belong, in the library. 

My library is small and has very limited space for things like noisy programs or classes. As a result, we tend to offer fewer programs and services than neighboring libraries. This is something that I would like to see change; and I believe it can be changed by going out into the community and offering programs and services in other spaces. Laura Warner writes in her article “Revolutionizing Public Libraries: Three Ways that Alternative Service Delivery Strategies Can Meet the Challenges of a Booming Population” that as municipalities grow, infrastructure struggles to keep up with the demand. Many libraries are now seeking alternative ways to deliver services including things like holds pick-up lockers, kiosks, book vending machines, and pop-up libraries.  

(Worcester Public Library, 2026)                  (Newton Free Library, 2026)

(Osterville Village Library, 2024)

All of these strategies are about making access easier and more equitable for the community. I think it is important to think about what the community needs and how we can make it easy for them to access services. And it’s not just about physical collections, either. Bringing storytime to the local elementary schools and computer classes to the council on aging in the town will show the community what the library can offer outside of the physical building and bring awareness to the changing landscape of library services.

This summer our small town is offering free lunch to all children up to age 18 at the elementary school. The school reached out to the library and asked if we would like to partner with them and have our children’s librarian come to the lunch and read stories and lead activities for the kids while they eat. This is a perfect example of a hyperlinked community idea. Meeting the kids and parents where they are and offering them something fun to do while having a meal is the kind of holistic approach modern libraries are looking for as a way to connect with patrons. As Dr. Stephens says in the lecture for the Hyperlinked Communities module, “hyperlinks are people,too.” Having the children’s librarian, or even the teen and programming librarian, at the summer lunch program is a great way to connect with and support the community. It shows them that we are willing to branch out and maybe even step outside of our comfort zones to engage with a group of people we might not normally interact with. Just that physical presence will make people stop and think about the library and its importance in the community, as well as what it can offer to the community. 

(Avon, MA, 2026)

An example of community involvement that I really love and feel connected to is the Madison Public Library’s “Library Takeover Project” (Smith, 2017). The city of Madison worked with its community partners to analyze the community’s needs, secure grant funding, plan programming, and educate and train patron-led groups to facilitate those programs. Giving community members “an opportunity to host their own events” (Smith, 2017) empowers them and acknowledges their role in shaping services that their tax dollars are paying for. It ties in to the idea of radically trusting your community that Michael Stephens writes about in his article “Beyond Buzzwords Ten Invitations to Build Library Connections and Community” (Stephens, 2025). It sounds scary, but asking for input and allowing the community to have a hand in developing and shaping the library is the true definition of a hyperlinked community.

This is similar to something we did in my library when we decided to change the way we charge for printing services. As I’ve mentioned, we’re a small library in a small town that is surrounded by bigger libraries and bigger towns. A few years ago we decided to offer 25 pages of free printing and 10 pages of free faxing a day. This is available to anyone who walks through our doors, they don’t have to live in the town or have a library card. This was done after we realized that we were seeing a lot of people who liked to use our public computers but when it came time to print or fax many patrons were unable to pay for the few things they needed and would leave. Making the change was a no-brainer after we surveyed the patrons and found that they like the library and the staff, but couldn’t afford the service. It was a small step the library could take to show the community that we value their input and respect their situations. It has paid off enormously by bringing more patrons through the door who might not otherwise think of our small library. We have seen an increase in library card sign-ups, circulation, and program attendance by people who said they only came in to use the computers but found something else they didn’t even realize they were looking for. I think that sums up the mission of the hyperlinked library and hyperlinked communities: offer the community what they need and what they don’t yet know they need. If we manage to accomplish those two things, the library will have served its purpose. 

(Created by ChatGPT)

References:

Newton Free Library. (2026). Holds pickup lockers. https://newtonfreelibrary.net/services/services/lockers/

Osterville Village Library. (2024). Osterville village library introduces 24/7 access to library materials. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO2bStB328o

Stephens, M. (2025). Beyond buzzwords ten invitations to build library connection and community. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/f05u6l0d50k8js28vgokz/Beyond-Buzzwords-Ten-Invitations-to-Build-Library-Connection-and-Community.pdf?rlkey=2i1b76g18h9t2qxmq3s1y7q90&st=of4tisuf&e=1&dl=0

Warner, L. (2024, January 17). Revolutionizing public libraries: Three way that alternative service delivery strategies can meet the challenges of a booming population. Medium. https://medium.com/@lauracwarner/revolutionizing-public-libraries-ff7fed3d12c5

Worcester Public Library. (2026). Library vending machine. https://mywpl.org/?q=article/library-vending-machine

As I’ve been working my way through the Hyperlinked Library course site and reading, I can feel myself becoming overwhelmed with all the information. And while I know that @michael said “do not feel overwhelmed,” sometimes I just can’t turn it off. Overwhelmed is my default. The interesting thing about this feeling, however, is that it’s not about the workload or the class itself, as daunting and challenging as those do seem at times, it’s about all the thoughts and ideas I’m getting about the “what’s” and “how’s” and “why’s” of librarianship. I see so many ideas and want to get started implementing them all right away. I’m learning that change is necessary and powerful, but it also takes time. 

A Little Background to Set the Stage

Avon Public Library, Avon, MA

I’ve been working in public libraries for a little over 11 years now, and while that isn’t a considerably long time, I’ve seen quite a few changes and faced some very interesting challenges over those years. I’m currently working as a technical services librarian in a small public library in a town of around 4700 people. Last month our library director decided to move on to a new library and her departure has prompted me to consider applying to be her replacement, a career path I never would have thought myself interested in before. 

My reasoning for considering this change in my career trajectory is that I want to have more involvement in creating a transparent and participatory atmosphere in the library. Over the past four years or so, I’ve seen the staff at my library suffer from boredom and an intense need to get away from the public facing areas. As it is right now, we have three circulation staff members (remember we’re a very small library) and each one of them seems to count down the minutes until the part of their shift when they’re “off desk.” I see this as an administrative failure when library staff don’t want to spend their time assisting and interacting with our patrons. As Casey and Stephens write, transparency can be simple but it “requires commitment from administrators and staff,” (2007) and I haven’t seen that commitment in my library at all. 

How to Bring About Transparency and Staff Buy-In

In his book Wholehearted Librarianship: Finding Hope, Inspiration, and Balance, @michael encourages us to dream at our library jobs. He says: “we have the potential to be the leaders as we all move towards a seamless information and knowledge environment” (Stephens, 2019). This is something that I would hope to foster in the staff at my library: that desire to dream about what we can do and how we can connect with our community. I know people have thoughts and ideas and I know we all talk about those things with each other, with the hope that someday we could implement different services and programs. We need to work on how to get from talking about it to doing it. Casey and Stephens offer a “to do” list of transparency in their article “A Road Map to Transparency,” that includes things such as cross-training staff, encouraging new ideas, and getting all departments to work together when planning projects (2007). I believe that these tools would give our staff who see their library work as just a job, and not a career or a service to the community, new meaning to their daily routine. We can change the culture of the library by giving each staff member something more to focus on and a reason to interact with the people who walk through our doors. 

Inclusion is small but powerful aspect of transparency.

There are so many different aspects to transparency and so many different ideas that I see that could be immensely beneficial to my small library and its community. Things like adopting a “user-driven policy” to get a better feel for not only what our users actually want, but what they might not know they need, getting all staff out into the front lines to see how the daily interactions with the patrons really work, and being more open to change by saying “yes” more often than saying “no.” All of these ideas will work to bring the staff into a more cohesive and unified group that is not working against each other, but towards a common goal of creating a transparent and participatory library space. 

The Avon Public Library went fine free in 2022

My Focus

For this class, I hope to focus my study on transparency and how that can benefit small public libraries. Our daily operations might be significantly different than that of a bustling, dynamic, city library, but we are just as vital. I might argue that in some ways we are even more vital in a small community than a library in a big city, where there are a multitude of different resources for the community. In a small suburban community the library can become a hub for information and learning outside of the more structured classroom setting; it might be the only place the community has to discover resources. This is why it’s vital that we connect with our users and foster an environment from within that encourages open communication and a willingness to work with our patrons and town leaders to bring about change.

References:

Avon Public Library. https://www.facebook.com/avonpubliclibrary

Baldwin Public Library. (n.d.). Career path graphic. https://baldwinpl.org/career-path-graphic/

Casey, M. and Stephens, M. (2007, December 15). Check your ego at the door. Tame the Web. https://tametheweb.com/2008/07/01/check-your-ego-at-the-door/

Casey, M. and Stephens, M. (2007, December 15). Going to the field. Tame the Web. https://tametheweb.com/2007/09/15/going-to-the-field/

Casey, M. and Stephens, M. (2007, December 15). A road map to transparency. Tame the Web. https://tametheweb.com/2007/12/15/a-road-map-to-transparency/

Casey, M. and Stephens, M. (2007, December 15). Six more signposts. Tame the Web. https://tametheweb.com/2007/09/15/going-to-the-field/

Casey, M. and Stephens, M. (2007, December 15). Six signposts on the way. Tame the Web. https://tametheweb.com/2008/11/15/six-signposts-on-the-way/

Casey, M. and Stephens, M. (2007, December 15). Turning “no” into “yes”. Tame the Web. https://tametheweb.com/2008/11/15/six-signposts-on-the-way/

Stephens, M. T. (2020). Wholehearted librarianship : finding hope, inspiration, and balance. ALA Editions.

Hi everyone! My name is Robyn and I live on the east coast, in Quincy, MA, which is about 15 minutes south of Boston. I’ve been enrolled at SJSU since the fall of 2024 and only have 4 more classes to take, 2 this summer and 2 in the fall, before taking the e-portfolio class and (hopefully!) graduating next spring.

Right now I work full time at a small public library as a technical services librarian. I purchase and catalog new materials along with maintaining our serials collection. I love selecting new titles to add to our collection but opening the boxes of books when they’re delivered is one of my favorite parts of my job! I’ve always loved the smell of books, it never gets old.

Since I started the MLIS program my priorities have shifted a little. I started out wanting to remain in the technical services realm, but the more classes I take, the more I’ve become interested in library administration. Who knows where I’ll end up!

Here’s a picture of my dog, Benny, at his favorite beach just down the street from my house.