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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

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: 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


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