Ask, Listen, Empower: Grounding Your Library Work in Community Engagement
Description
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.
Praise for Ask, Listen, Empower: Grounding Your Library Work in Community Engagement
"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