Social media provide many new opportunities for libraries to engage their communities--but you need to work in the physical world as well. This article combines several insights on community engagement.

Where is a Library's Community?

By Brian Herzog. Excerpted and adapted from a September 29, 2009 post at Swiss Army Librarian. Used by permission. Subheads added.

Here’s an interesting situation - so interesting, in fact, that I find my self in agreement with both sides of the issue.

The Concord (NH) Public Library found that it couldn’t afford to purchase all the books it wanted. So, it started a program where patrons could purchase and “donate” a copy of a book from the Library’s wish list.

Great idea. They explained the program on their website, set up wish lists on Amazon, and waited for the books to roll in. Good use of Web 2.0-ish technology, right? Patrons could just click and pay for the book, and it would be shipped right to the library. Kudos to the library for being creative and proactive and making it easy for the public to support the library in a very useful way.

[Editor's Note: I was going to provide excerpts from the program explanation, but the URL provided in the post now leads to a page-not-found 404 error. But see below...]

But after four weeks, only four of the 30+ books on the wish list were purchased.

Enter a Local Bookstore

Last Thursday, the owner of the independent Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord sent out a message to his customers. He explains very well what he feels the library did wrong, and appealed to his customers to support the local library buy purchasing the books locally. He even created a duplicate click-to-purchase wish list for people to use to donate books to the library.

The result? In less than 24 hours, all of the remaining wish list books were purchased to be donated to the library (which is why the wish lists are now empty).

Editor's Interjection: The Current Status

CPL's website now includes an explanation of how a patron can donate a book via Gibson's, Borders or Amazon:

Budget reductions this year mean that the Concord Public Library will be buying half as many books as in previous years, including fewer duplicate copies of best sellers. We are turning to our patrons and the community for help.

Can you help us STOCK THE SHELVES? The Library has created wish lists for four categories of books: Children’s Books, Adult Fiction Titles, Adult Non-fiction Titles, and Penacook Branch Books. The wish lists are available at local bookstores or online.

It’s easy to make a donation. Here’s how:

• Go to Gibson’s Book Store or Borders Books in Concord and make a purchase from a wish list at the store. The book store and the Library will make arrangements to deliver the book to the Library.
• Or, shop online at Amazon.com, and search for “Concord Public Library” under the “Wish List” tab. Amazon will ship us the book.

A book plate will be placed in each book with the donor’s name.

As of December 3, 2009, the four Amazon wish lists include a total of 57 items, presumably being added to regularly--including some books not yet published.

Good Results and Tricky Issues

This benefits the library, right? And it benefits local business, which benefits the tax base and the local workers, and everyone is happy, right? So why didn’t the library just do that in the first place?

I wonder: could the library have done anything differently? I think the Amazon wish list was a good idea, but it wasn’t successful. I don’t know what kind of promotion it got, but perhaps the library’s website just doesn’t get enough traffic.

Also, the idea of a library partnering with a local business is a bit of a sticky wicket. Being a non-profit government department, libraries usually cannot do anything that would imply it favors one business over another. But I suppose it would have been okay if the library approached all the bookstores in town - which I think is limited to Gibson’s and a Borders, anyway.

This then starts to make the program more complicated and difficult to manage, to make sure patrons don’t purchase duplicate books. But by opening the program up to the customers of the stores, the library would have been able to reach more members of the community.

Going Where the Community Is

Library communities are not just the people who come through the door, and certainly not just the people who visit the website. When libraries reach out to the community, we have to go to where the community is, and not just wait for them to come to us.

Updates and Comments

The Concord Monitor had an article on Gibson's actions; the reader comments are particularly interesting and show the complexity of library-community reactions. (That's an editorial comment, not part of Herzog's post.) As noted in an update on the post, in October the library established a program involving both bookstores and Amazon; see Editor's Interjection above.

From comments on the post itself (reformatted and excerpted):

• Amanda: I can completely understand why the local bookstore was upset. Public libraries are supposed to be about the local community, and it absolutely makes the most sense for their wish list to be connected with the local bookstores. The point you bring up of possible perceived favoritism is a good one. I would think that would be solved by asking all the bookstores to participate, but I am not a public librarian so am not certain of the logistics. I know I would certainly feel like I’d done the community more good if I bought the book to donate from a local bookstore. What if they made a wiki wishlist? People could edit to say they’d purchased the book to prevent duplicates…..or something. [Editor's note: How many libraries have been successful in getting average library users to edit wikis? In a reply, Herzog says it would work "as long as the patrons could figure it out."]]
• Michael Herrmann (proprietor of Gibson's Bookstore): ...I would like to point out one thing that you aren’t giving sufficient weight to, in my view–when the CPL posted the list exclusively on Amazon, they were already favoring one business over all others… which you rightly note should be taboo.It’s funny, people don’t think of Amazon as a business that is in competition with other businesses. They think of Amazon more as some kind of force of nature or something, above the fray. But they are every bookstore’s deadliest local competition.
• Jessica:... While I agree that the library’s original plan to use Amazon did not take into consideration the “support your local business” aspect, my take is that they decided to go with something that was very easy to implement, and that would, in a word, just work. Amazon is set up to do things like this, while many small businesses may lack the website capabilities, staff tech abilities, staff time, or just plain willingness to do so. I think it’s great that this book store was willing and able to dedicate the time to the wish list...because, clearly, this was not just an automatic and easy task. The use of email to track the list alone makes it labor-intensive for them and their staff. I was also thinking about using Amazon to create a wish list for books at our library--and I fully admit that I don’t know that I would have approached the local store about doing it for us. And while I will now take that much more into consideration, I have to say I will be...surprised if the stores in our area have the resources and capabilities to do it, without making it more of a hassle than it is worth for them (and, naturally, for us).

Have You Asked?

By Jill Hurst-Wahl. Excerpted and adapted from "For New Yorkers: Have you asked," an October 2, 2009 post on Digitization 101, which uses a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license.

On Tuesday, I attended a short workshop given by Libby Post of Communication Services on the ways public libraries in New York State are organized and funded--association library, municipal public library, school district public library, special district public library. It was very educational and I wish more people had been there to hear her. This is stuff that you don't learn in library school or in some work situations.

Post is big on communication and branding. She believes in getting the conversation started early when a library is thinking of having residents vote on its budget, etc. And of course the more people who hear, understand and back the message, the better.

As a side note, one of our local politicians was also at the workshop (Al Stirpe) and he was impressed with Post's political savviness. Did I hear him say he'd like her to run his campaign?!

On Wednesday, Bernard Margolis, the New York State Librarian, visited the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. Margolis attended several meetings with faculty and give a lunchtime (brown bag) talk to 30+ people including many MSLIS students. I think it was a very productive day for Margolis and those who met with him. I suspect that students were surprised at the breadth of things and concerns under his purview.

So what does "have you asked?" have to do with this?

In several of the conversations was this idea that we need to ask people (patrons, funders) to get to know us and for their support. Unfortunately, asking can feel uncomfortable, but it can be amazing what will happen when you ask. People will engage you in conversation, listen to your concerns, find ways of supporting your ideas, and perhaps go out of their way in order to help you succeed.

Who should you be asking?

The sky's the limit:

• Ask your local and regional political leaders to attend an event at your library, museum or archive. Even if they don't come, they now have an awareness of you and that is a good thing.
• Ask members of the Board of Regents (or the equivalent board in your state or region) to attend an event or speak at an event. They definitely need to know who you are.
• Ask the State Librarian or members of his staff to interact with you on an idea or attend an event.
• Ask anyone of the above to be on a panel, provide a keynote, talk to staff, etc.
• Ask them to intercede on your behalf, when appropriate.
• Ask if you can visit them or their staff.
• Ask other members of the cultural heritage community to visit and interact with you. Don't assume that they know your circumstances and how you all might work together.
• Ask your patrons/users for their support. Get them to interact with your political leaders on your behalf. As constituents, they have powerful voice.
• Ask...whomever else comes to mind. 

Citizens, engage!

By Jamie LaRue. Originally published in early 2008 in LaRue's Views.

My fundamental idea of librarianship has changed a lot over the years. I began with a simple love of books. Books did and do make me happy.

When I became a director, I focused on trying to understand the remarkably complex background of library operations. (Any business is complex when you really dig into it.)

As the leader of any organization must, I eventually refocused on the process of securing sufficient resources to accomplish our plans. That required me to take a look at the larger context of the library environment.

At first, I saw the community (everybody "out there") as tools to help the library do its job.

About a decade ago, I had an epiphany. I realized that I had it exactly backward. It is not the job of the community to help the library. It is the job of the library to help the community.

We do that in two ways. The first is through personal transactions--our responses to individual questions.

But we are also a social asset, serving the larger community in a number of other ways. One way is as an anchor of downtowns, a destination whose traffic greatly benefits those around us.

Our community meeting spaces also provide an essential opportunity for people to find not just library resources, but each other. We provide something that is in all-too-short supply in our world: common and neutral ground, public space available to all, and staffed with good listeners and researchers to help inform our conversations.

I believe the future of public librarianship lies precisely in this sphere of community integration. Every community has issues, questions, projects. Libraries aren't the only assets that can be deployed to assist; but they are, or can be, powerful ones, especially when partnered with others.

There is a swing in societal movements that parallels my own. One generations focuses only on itself. Eventually, either that older generation, or a new generation altogether, comes along to say, "but what about the rest of us? What about the larger community in which we all live? What kind of environment are we making not just for ourselves, but for those who come after us?"

And that question is the beginning of what some call "civic engagement."

Civic engagement has many dimensions. One of them, in a presidential election year, is obvious. Question: Who will decide the nation's leadership? Answer: only those who vote. If you're not registered to vote, or if you're registered, but DON'T vote, then you abdicate that decision to the people who do vote. You surrender to others the ability to decide your own future. And you live with the consequences of those decisions.

But civic engagement means more than politics and voting. It means taking actions, together, that result in a community worth living in, in which many can and do thrive.

That engagement will involve, on occasion, some conflict. There are competing visions of the future, and sometimes they have to be argued out.

The point, however, is not conflict. It is, finally, about cooperation, about processes of analysis and action to effect useful change.

What kind of community do you want to live in? And what will it take to craft that community, together? Isn't it time that you joined the conversation?

Let's catalog the community

By Jamie LaRue. Originally appeared in August 2006 in LaRue's Views.

A couple of years ago, we were working on the design of our Philip S. Miller Library in Castle Rock. To that end, we did what we always do: talk with the community.

We held meetings with seniors, elementary school students, civic groups, and storytime moms. We listened to business people and government workers. Over and over, we asked, "What do you want to see in a library?"

There was a lot of overlap. Everybody wanted us to have books, books, and more books. Another strong contingent asked for recorded books--on audiotape and CD.

Many people pushed us to greatly expand our public computers. They liked our big, fast, Internet pipeline.

Oh, and here's the one that always tickles me: they wanted fire and water. Almost every time I have held a focus group in Douglas County, eventually somebody brings up the importance of fireplaces (gathering around the hearth, warmth, shelter), and the sound of running water. People want to be inside and outside at the same time.

Well, all of our libraries do have fireplaces now. We haven't quite worked out how to do the kayak-ready river people seem to want, but we have experimented with small sculptures that recycle water and produce a pleasant burbling.

People also, consistently, asked for more public art. And so it is that most of our public libraries now also serve as community galleries.

The big surprise for me was the strong request for more public meeting rooms. Our old library had just one big meeting space, about 500 square feet. But the request for more made me go back and examine the pattern of use.

Sure enough, that room was booked Monday through Thursday night, a year in advance. But not all of our meetings were big ones. Sometimes, fewer than half a dozen folks were looking for gathering space.

Our projected new library space was slated for about 30,000 square feet. By the time we were done, at least 5,000 of that was dedicated to variously sized public meeting rooms: a big room that held about 150 people (or could be divided into two rooms holding about 65 each), a couple of spaces that seated about 20, another that seated 8-12, and a handful of big, office-size spaces for 1-5. That doesn't include our storytime space.

One of our staff members was troubled by this. "Does this mean," she asked us, "that people don't really want a library at all? They want us to be some kind of convention center!"

I think a lot about the question of mission creep--what happens when public institutions start accepting more and more responsibilities that aren't really a part of their job. Ultimately, I think, such institutions fail to do anything well.

But I didn't, and don't, think that's the case here.

What is the job of the public library? Here's my read on it: to gather, to organize, and to present to the community the intellectual assets of our culture.

Books are obvious examples. Music is another. Movies are a third. And the burgeoning world of electronic information is yet another. What's missing?

You are! Even in the wired age, how do most of us get the information we're looking for? From each other!

The people within a community are just as much an "intellectual asset," a resource for learning, as any book we've got.

But that means more than just providing public meeting space. It also means that we need to apply the librarian skill set to the populations where we live. We need to catalog the community.

What does that look like? At a minimum, our website should contain comprehensive listings, boosted by a powerful search mechanism, of all those groups mentioned above: seniors, business people, school populations, government workers, civic groups, and more.

Ideally, someone should be able to type into our website, for instance, "home schooling," and not only get our books on the subject, not only retrieve a host of relevant electronic periodical articles, but also find out about area organizations that support home schooling, and when they might meet at the library.

Not too long ago, I read about a library in Scandinavia (I think) that took the idea one step further: need an expert? Look one up in at the library. Check him out!

I don't know how they handle renewals, or fines. But it's a good idea. It's the right idea.

Related Articles

• Through Patrons' Eyes - Experiencing your library the way your community does.
• Librarians as Salespeople? - Do all of your library staff need to be selling your library to the community?
• Demonstrating Library Value - Assuring that your community, at all levels, appreciates the value of your library.
• Advocacy and Marketing - Advocacy and community engagements works in several directions.