News

  • Listen. Partner. Follow Through: Community Engagement Principles

    The best part of my job at OCLC is getting to hear about the impactful programs and activities that libraries create to solve community problems and help transform lives. I recently got the chance to talk to Nancy Pacheco and Elizabeth Gray from the ...

  • Host Your Own Cardboard Carnival

    It started as part of a Saturday program with underrepresented students in STEM, paired with mentors from Northwestern University to work on monthly engineering design projects. After several years of one-off projects that were, frankly, a bit stale,...

  • Socially Connected Communities: Solutions for Social Isolation

    A new report on Socially Connected Communities: Solutions for Social Isolation published by Healthy Places by Design highlights how librarians and other leaders can work together to address this issue. The report was developed based on a series of co...

  • Pima County Library: Building Community through Cultural Humility

    It’s no secret that a lot of really wonderful people work in libraries. I learn so much from having regular access to motivated, smart people who are so passionate about helping others. The best librarians possess a unique blend of conviction, commit...

  • Successful Partnership Model Provides Legal Assistance Across Colorado

    Ric Morgan is a humble man who brushes off any accolades to himself and gives all the credit to librarians. “Go give the librarians a hug. Thank the librarians, they’re the ones who make this all possible!” Morgan is referring to successes of the Vir...

  • Build on Strengths When Responding to a Crisis

    As the REALM project (REopening Archives, Libraries, and Museums) continues to gather and adapt science-based information to inform local decision making by libraries, archives, and museums, it’s been essential to listen to the real-world experiences...

  • Public Health is Part of Library Outreach

    Outreach efforts in the public library increasingly center around building, sustaining, and leveraging community partnerships, including with public health partners. That fact was evident at the 2021 Association of Bookmobile & Outreach Services’...

  • Skills for Community-Centered Libraries Curriculum Available

    Like many libraries across the nation, the Free Library of Philadelphia is undergoing a paradigm shift. Increasingly, our focus is not only on extensive collections but on how we are engaging with our communities. To address this shift, the Free Libr...

  • Partnerships as the Key to the Future of Rural Library Services to Older Adults

    When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, public librarians grappled with the challenge of how to continue supporting the types of social connections they had, pre-pandemic, facilitated through engaging programming and inviting spaces. For many older adult...

  • Community of Practice for Telehealth at the Library

    Even before the pandemic, Pottsboro Library in Texas had begun to focus more on health, through their community garden, and programming like cooking classes for families on a SNAP budget. But when director Dianne Connery witnessed the added challenge...