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Notes from Breakout Session: Community outreach encompassing participatory research and connecting with marginalized communities/populations

Community Outreach (Public Libraries)

• sponsored event tabling
• bringing books twice a month to seniors
• storytime weekly
• STEM engagement weekly
• emergency services bookmobile
• family-safe events
• list resources for community
• book station and staff presence at parades and public events
• tech support for communities/groups in need
• involvement in community gardens and food sustainability efforts
• books sent to correctional facilities
• How can you inspire the general public to care about and engage with the library?
• Recognizing limited bandwidth
• Hard to prioritize when there is a lot of work to do
• Some libraries/librarians are really great about using social media channels, not all are though
• Consistent messaging throughout communities and the field
• Lots of room to advocate for the future of libraries
• It’s important to expose what can happen when bans and challenges happen
• How can we support those people (job loss, threats, etc)
• How do we enact radical change? Groundwork
• Tapping into public outrage

Community Outreach (Academic Libraries)

• participate in new student orientation
• highlight accessible study spaces
• showcase materials to public when relevant
• community can access databases/materials when present at library

Connecting with Marginalized Communities (Academic Libraries)

• liaisons with cultural centers on campus (can help with collections/research)
• streaming video
• enabling trust with loaned materials
• vetting vendors (sales of information and ethics)
• no fines
• language translation

Participatory Research

• include ambassadors from the community
• facilitate community space
• tabling at neighborhood meetings and community centers
• language ambassadors / translation for community

Notes from Breakout Session: Supporting teacher librarians (This was entirely Iowa librarians conversing and that's reflected in the notes/conversation)

• At ILA, sent cards to school librarians
• School librarians have hard time at library things bc not critical mass of them
• Other librarians not at PTA meetings etc
• In IA, positions being filled by anyone available (neither library nor teacher credential required)
• ILA lobbyists didn't take on unwinnable fights for school libraries this session, which probably doesn't help people feel supported (and doesn't have ILA on record in that effort either)
• Tons of kids don't know public library is there, so school library is it
• Public libraries can invite legislators into our space and teacher librarians can't do that
• Events inviting in politicians could extend to school board members
• Public libraries buying pulled books required updates on pulled books--may or may not be appropriate/necessary to buy 1:1 but if they're losing a bunch of books in a couple categories, we should be shoring up ours
• If we're visible to teacher librarians (at PTA mtgs, school board, etc), they know where to find us when they have time and need support
• School librarians are busy and have to keep heads down--concerned parents on our side can be a vehicle
• It's going to take lawsuits--did in MO
• Teacher librarians have presented qs on law to the state and not received adequate responses
• Has been convincing to teacher librarians, encouraging advocacy, probably not from an individual public library: when a lawsuit comes, do you want it coming to you, the district, or the Dept of Ed?
• Burlington: waiting for clear directives from state before complying; too vague
• As a school librarian, parents know you, admin know you. Also hard to miss work. Makes it difficult to show up in person to lobby/advocate
• Retired teacher librarians?
• Parent programming (alongside sthg for kids, and food) at public libraries to talk about stuff going on in school libraries & make space for convo & relationship building
• In IC area, schools are pulling back on partnerships with public libraries bc of liability concerns
• When schools take kids to public libraries without the same restrictions, teachers might end up with banned books in their classrooms etc. We should chat to them as part of planning events, be clear on what we can offer
• 60% of IA community colleges have HS dual enrollment; kids have totally different access between two environments
• Public libraries can get info to parents that school libraries might not want to or be permitted to share
• With politicians too: show your value first, create opportunities for them to brag
• West Liberty does "Celebrity Storytime" with mayor, public works person, parks person--they read story, then librarian interviews them
• Person X's Book List--Iowa City has done mayor, could do superintendent
• Students in practicum or credit situations can be useful for specific bits of skilled work as well as outreach (like well-connected community members are good for outreach)
• Food programming has been useful for cross-cultural programming at IC
• Climate Action has $
• Make an effort to be visible to school librarians repeatedly--small opportunities are ok if (ideally) frequent
• Who oversees school lib continuing ed in Iowa?
• Last year IA had second most anti-library bills in USA. IA is coming after public funding at that'll be public libraries next
• If community doesn't feel impact, how will they know? When we lose resources--especially due to decisions of local voters--it's ok not to patch the gap as much as we can. Sometimes it needs to be noticeable
• West Liberty used their monthly column in paper to explain school libraries, what they do, why they're important

Notes from Breakout Session: Labor organizing

• Union reps can be good and bad; sometimes they can communicate tough issues in a good way
• Having a union rep in disciplinary meetings has been useful
• Labor organizing does not necessarily mean unionizing; it could mean 20 people pushing forward and back with colleagues and fixing problems together
• Having a union provides some legal protections
• Being adequately staffed versus calling the cops
• Reading groups with staff whose priority it is to have convos about "safety"
• Everyone-But-Managers Book Club
• Wages in Missouri ($12.50) versus Iowa ($16.00-17.00) versus Lawrence (~ $16.00)
• MLIS - you need one to get a job; to survive cost of living
• Asking "is this too much, is this going too hard?" because you are worried about pissing off admin

Des Moines Public Library Union:

• 2 staff (librarians and clerks)
• Unions meet together and bargain together
• Took lower raise for librarians to get higher wage for clerks

Academic Library Unions

• A lot of staff are on the same page about union meetings but hesitate to take action
• Contention exists within union organizing

Building power in the Midwest and Connecting to Library Values

• Building relationships with coworkers
• Sharing the basics of unions among library workers

Notes from Breakout Session: Supporting staff

• How you support staff depends on where you are in the hierarchy
• Things change often
• Your leaders can support each other in different ways
• Containers - Spaces for staff to do your best work
• Boundaries - Between higher-ups and other staff and others
• It’s always an incremental process

SWOT Analysis Notes

Strengths

• Community connections
• Belongs to everyone
• Collaboration - libraries already have pre-existing networks for sharing ideas and strategies and are comfortable collaborating
• There is nothing else like us under the sun
• Free and indoors! Nothing is free anymore
• Means-tested
• Third space that is air-conditioned
• Dedicated staff at libraries
• We are fighting for a better world - diverse books, programming, etc. - every day against serious odds
• Becoming targets demonstrates our power
• We can and should step forward in these conversations/advocacies to write the futures of wages, privacy, vendor agreements, intellectual freedom
• Agility in smaller and more focused groups
• Digital connection and governance
• Partnerships with affinity groups like ACLU and Pen America
• The know-how and history of connecting people to information
• Growing activism in youth groups that are speaking out
• Widespread, nationwide, in almost every town
• Local library workers can be responsive to specific communities
• Community support - to and from
• State and national level professional organizations
• Trained staff, ongoing learning
• Attitude - many librarians care but lack practical tools and knowledge
• High public approval ratings
• Community reputation
• Community trust (at a time when that is rare)

Weaknesses

• Mental health crisis
• Understaffing restricts services and increases reliance on cops
• Limited alternatives to shitty vendors and service providers
• Right-wing extremist attacks
• Making ilbrarians personally liable for items in the collection
• They keep giving our money to cops and we don't have organized support
• "Children don't have rights"
• Public libraries have a hard time claiming their power - leveraging/changing policy, saying no
• Taxes - "taxpayers" and "parents"
• Accessibility - we can be hard to get to
• Not enough people in public libraries seeking leadership priorities
• Post-COVID habits lost
• Budget cuts
• Lack of a living wage, especially in largely rural states
• Leadership with inaccurate ideas of who we're here to serve
• Staff retention and burnout
• Compassion fatigue
• Conflict aversion
• Staff like marketing security without library ethics training - even circ staff
• Nonexistent onboarding and high staff turnover
• Having a policy isn't enough
• Finding revenue sources is difficult
• Funding
• State legislation (DEAI) funding
• Budget constraints to fight attacks
• Some places have lack of community buy-in
• Complete lack of public awareness outside of libraryland
• Misconceptions about libraries
• Both-sidesism as a form of "neutrality"
• Willful ignorance of targeted opposition
• Information literacy
• Neutrality versus serving public interest in a progressive way
• Very white field, especially in living-wage, decision-making positions
• (Useless) LIS degree dominance reinforces white middle classness
• Job creep, burnout, saviorism and white supremacy characteristics
• Tax/government/publicly funded
• Local staff can be isolated and limited in resources
• Obsession with neutrality while misunderstanding its legal meaning
• Money, time, and energy are spread too thin
• Old-fashioned values within libraries and coworkers
• Public perception of being obsolete
• All of our software options suck and make us look bad
• The thinking that we need to operate more like businesses
• Obsession with new tech without a critical eye
• Filling social services gaps without becoming radicalized about why these gaps exist
• Limited ability to advocate for ourselves due to perceived community position
• Very white and middle class profession
• Unprofessional profession
• Bystander syndrome
• Lack of clarity on the role and mission of libraries (privacy? access? social services? we are expected to provide all of these)
• Vocational pressure to save democracy
• Administration loves trends (wasteful, pulls staff in too many directions, kills usefulness)
• Spreading ourselves and our limited funding too thin filling in gaps in social services
• Vocational awe

Weaknesses

• A great equalizer
• Public buy-in, regulars caring about libraries and feeling ownership is an opportunity to draw on
• Other ways to think of safety
• Outreach - Libraries have the opportunity to establish trust with communities who may have greater privacy concerns and use that to leverage better policy
• Regulars can mean substantial relationships - if staff have time and energy
• Easy to say “from the library” to connect with partners
• Organizing mobilizing efforts from grassroots efforts
• People have concerns about Big Tech and AI - we can help educate
• Potential backlash to the increased privatization of life
• Crafting better stories
• Great experiences
• Loss of library levy (or other funds) creates space for more advocacy and community engagement
• COVID closures gave libraries a chance to revisit core services and community needs
• Professional connections and continuing education
• High trust from community (in most cases)
• Engaging with library students to make sure they have access to the resources they need to advocate and organize (radicalize them early)
• Build user base
• Seeking common ground among all groups
• Organize supporters
• Greater representation on staff, boards, etc. of traditionally under-represented groups
• Shifting cultural values - majority may be quiet but will often speak up when pushed
• Leveraging position in the community
• Libraries partnering with other groups - public health, social services, etc.
• Continuing to organize and mobilize people around IF challenges and book bans (both library workers and patrons)
• Coalition-building
• Connecting with marginalized communities
• Free/fourth space
• Hub for activism, diversity, inclusion
• Civil rights law conversations
• Organization - if systems are not in place they can be designed from scratch
• Libraries are for everyone
• We are (or could be) part of everyone’s abundance story

Threats

• Not committed to civil rights in the way we are to the first amendment
• Hate groups
• Anti-progressive movements taking advantage of a divided society - misinformation and distrust of public institutions
• Organized and well-funded opposition
• General public not fully aware of the danger we are in
• Our opposition is way more organized than we are
• Labor precarity
• Misinformation and disinformation around labor organizing
• Normative whiteness
• Enforcement of “unhelpful” (Iowa euphemism for racist) norms
• Too big to fail structures and monopolies
• Inward strife between organizations
• Political climate
• Commitment to policing patrons, refusal to be imaginative about safety
• Pre-existing trust - public implicitly trusts libraries that may be reckless with their data - this impacts outreach abilities and is an ethics threat
• Security - increased attacks on libraries are bridging more attention to library security and makes safety at the expense of privacy more appealing
• Marketing - libraries utilizing conventional marketing teams - may be employing people with few scruples about data
• LIS programs have shifted from “professors of practice” (actually working in libraries) to traditional adjuncts (not working in libraries)
• Cool Big New Idea of unstaffed libraries (can’t actually meet many needs)
• Uninformed legislation and legislators
• Policies/legislation
• Weak protection and policies
• Burnout x 2
• General lack of information seeking behaviors - how to start the conversation with patrons, community, etc.
• AI? (related to misinformation)
• It’s legal to bring concealed weapons into public buildings in Iowa
• Get caught in crossfire of polarization (because we’re a place for everyone)
• Nationalism and religious extremism
• Vocal minority
• Community events intended to spark controversial pushback from library (Brave Books Tour)
• IF challenges under the guise of “protecting children” (in libraries) or “stopping drugs” (in prisons)
• Book-banning and censorship
• Organized attacks like M4L, bomb threats, etc.
• Organized opposition to IF
• Negative/opposition groups
• Budget cuts
• Funding

What trainings do you need? What do you wish you knew? What are you already doing?

• Best practices for when cops show up at your library
• Increasing need for training for FOIA requests - esp for admin, boards, associations
• Data retention/scrubbing when it comes to vendors - Springshare products, seem to keep data forever, some options to scrub the data but what should we be thinking about with regard to this
• Attempts to create security software to integrate stuff from teen services to allow security to keep track of “dangerous” teens - are there programs allowing interdepartmental tracking but keeping that info on our servers with an easy deletion method - iowa city has this internally
• Local police has access to our security cameras in and outside of the building - how to best address that in a way that doesn’t create problems
• Police asking for records, whether someone was in the library, how do we be a community partner while also protecting privacy - aclu resources
• Facial recognition cameras getting installed on ICPL - no public comment, how do we ask privacy questions about this, asking the board what was their decision making role in this
• Privacy resources for parents of trans kids and resources for trans people

marketing/vendors, are there alternatives that we can give them that help them make better privacy decisions

• Vendor privacy 101 - questions to ask
• Privacy convo to stakeholders - how to talk to legislators, sharing how our vendors want our public’s data
• Reporting guidelines, what recourse do we have for harassment and privacy violations

Notes from Intellectual Freedom session: Slides

• Smaller libraries don’t want attention on them - makes them wishy washy
• Why does a book have to change your life to earn its space?
• Also the privacy aspect of book banning issues
• So many layers - layer fatigue
• Small library got the book “Melissa” challenged - brought before the people who run the city, the library was threatened with defunding/not renewing their lease. They had to choose between not having a building or with keeping the book in their collection. Lots of people turned out to the city council meeting to protest it but it was a shocking display of power, everyone in the area is now on edge.
• Threat against the library that turned out to be a crank call, as a result reevaluating security procedures (it was already kind of happening) but now there is talk about facial recognition tech being on the radar
• In Missouri they voted to defund libraries
• Missouri prisons banned books again, campaign to call DOC to protest this
• How this is coming into the academic space - in one academic library, anon chat question asking about Big 10 institutions and DEI/collections, demanding that taxpayers should have a say in these collections
• Academic world - shows up as harassment and doxxing usually, most egregious example is places like new college in florida - desantis-led hostile takeover of a progressive school
• IF talking points - Iowa Library Association intellectual freedom committee has had a citizen use their help form to report their 1st amendment rights being violated because his library won’t stock an NRA magazine about guns for kids - reached out multiple times to get the library to purchase right wing extremist mags. Library has multiple times said that these resources don’t meet community needs. The IF committee has struggled with responding to him beyond just sharing their mission etc.
• Teacher librarians are often chilled when it comes to responding to IF issues
• National hotlines are coming but not fast enough
• Iowa city public library - if the community circulates it, the community has spoken