Building Communities of Learning through Sharing

December 12, 2016

By Chantale Boileau, Tracy Munusami, Lindsay Stephens and Brandy Smith

The Outreach Network (TON) provides an opportunity for Community Librarians and other staff who work in community engagement, outreach, and programming in Ontario to share their knowledge, ideas, experiences, resources, and best practices. Started in 2015 by Lindsay Stephens, the Southwestern chapter lead from Haldimand County Public Library, and Brandy Smith, the Eastern chapter lead from Brockville Public Library, this network of peers meets twice a year in May and September.

The Spring session includes a meeting in the morning and speakers in the afternoon. The morning meeting gives participants the opportunity to share success stories, stories of what keeps us up at night, and to discuss trends in community outreach. In the afternoon, the Southern Ontario Library Service (SOLS) provides speakers who talk about their innovative work in their communities.

“The Outreach Network meetings are so valuable in that you get to have conversations with your peers, in your field, doing the same things you’re doing, often sharing the same success and struggles. As a developing and constantly growing and evolving field of library work, sometimes you feel like you’re making it up as you go along, while trying to be methodical and maintain best practices. One of the most common feedback comments after the meeting is the value and importance of face to face interactions and the local connections. The ideas are endless and discussions could go on for days!”

Brandy Smith

Why should you or your staff consider joining?

Libraries everywhere are exploring the concepts of community-led engagement and outreach and trying to implement a strategy for their system. Having a peer support group for staff gives them the chance to network with librarians from a variety of public libraries who are struggling with the same issues. The shared best practices, hard-won knowledge and experiences of people in similar situations can be transferred to your library.

Shared learning in action

Fall 2016 saw the first two-day Community Librarian Camp Un-conference, organized by Chantale Boileau and Tracy Munusami from the Barrie Public Library. The theme was Community Stories. It was held at the YMCA Geneva Park lodge, complete with campfire, outdoor trails and picnic tables. This might be the closest a library conference has come to actually camping!

From now on, Library Camp will be the Fall professional development opportunity for The Outreach Network. Such camps are unique in that they assume that ‘whoever comes are the right people’, as the event is led by whoever attends. A participant-driven approach allows for active involvement by all attendees and allows for topics of interest to be chosen by the group. Opportunities for networking at breaks and in the evening lets participants discuss ideas they want to expand on or hear more about. Will Library Camp one day be held in cabins and tents? It is up to the participants to decide!

At the 2016 Library Camp, participants engaged in ad-hoc sessions and open group discussions that they themselves directed. On the first day, libraries shared their unique community engagement stories. Discussion ranged from transitioning from a Friends of the Library group, to Daddy-Daughter hair care. Because participants came from different sized libraries, new perspective was added to our discussions which sparked new ideas.

On day two, camp participants wanted to focus on what we had accomplished in our libraries: ‘wins’ such as capitalizing on current trends, such as Pokémon Go and colouring clubs.

We agreed that libraries cannot succeed without organizational buy-in. We discussed strategies to engage staff by setting and evaluating goals as a group. One library shared that, in their case, involving staff in internal asset mapping to identify what the library can offer to potential partners and the community was very successful. We asked how we could demonstrate our value to the Library Board when statistics are given such weight. We agreed that we need to focus on stories as these and our connections are our successes.

We all struggle with community members saying they want something and then not being invested enough to contribute or to attend. We discussed how and where to meet up with non-users outside of the library, and how to survey them. This included a great idea to challenge a teen advisory board to compete against each other to get the most surveys from their peers. We talked about our marketing tools of choice (Meetup, Eventbrite, Facebook events, LibraryAware, and Canvaa), and reminded ourselves not to undervalue the importance of the personal invitation.

We also talked about what being Community-Led means to us. We all agreed community needs must be decided with our communities and are unique to our cities and towns. Throughout the unconference, we discussed community-led, community engagement, community development, the needs-based library, outreach, and where they fit in our libraries. We are all still dabbling and are figuring out what works best for our communities. This is a process, not a result. We are on a journey to build connections and our focus is not on the destination, but on the relationships we build along the way. The discussion will continue in 2017!

Library Camp was a chance to disconnect from technology; it was PowerPoint free, relying on flipboards and whiteboards where necessary. To see what we learned and what it looked like check out #commlibcamp on Twitter and Instagram.

To join the Community Outreach Network listserv, administered by http://lists.library.on.ca/, or join The Outreach Network – Ontario Public Libraries LinkedIn group.

Chantale Boileau is a Community Librarian at the Barrie Public Library. Chantale builds relationships with local businesses, service providers, and youth entrepreneurs by attending meetings and events, facilitating programs as an instructor or guest lecturer, and by continuously developing new connections and partnerships.

Tracy Munusami is a Community Librarian at the Barrie Public Library. She has spent almost two years exploring what it means to be a community-led library. Tracy has built connections and tailored the community-led model to meet the needs of the citizens.

Lindsay Stephens is the Community Outreach/Inreach Coordinator at Haldimand County Public Library. Lindsay focuses on developing and facilitating community-led programs which support social, educational and recreational pursuits at the Library. She can be found at our branches and out around our towns promoting the betterment of the community through responsive library services and partnerships.

Brandy Smith is the Community Engagement Coordinator at Brockville Public Library. Brandy’s focus is community capacity building and engagement through relationship building, community led programming with local agencies, library customers and volunteers, at the library and out in the community. She constantly advocates and promotes public libraries as community centres.