Introduction to Bridgebuilding: A course for strengthening community trust and connection

Public libraries provide spaces where people of all backgrounds can connect, learn, and build a shared future. They also help build social trust and civic engagement. To support this vital work, IREX, the Urban Libraries Council, and OCLC’s WebJunction completed a year-long bridgebuilding project. The Library Bridgebuilding program aims to provide library staff with the tools, strategies, and support they need to bridge divides and strengthen trust in their communities.

From a community of practice to applied learning

At the heart of this initiative was a Community of Practice consisting of 331 library staff from 46 states. The national Community of Practice provided participants with opportunities to connect with peers, access new resources, and seek funding to enhance their work in building social trust. For 12 months, they learned together and supported each other on their bridgebuilding journeys. 

The community’s learnings resulted in the free, on-demand course, An Introduction to Bridgebuilding: Creating a Library Where Everyone Belongs, available through the WebJunction catalog. The course synthesizes insights developed by the Community of Practice and provides an introduction to bridgebuilding for learners.

What you’ll learn in An Introduction to Bridgebuilding

After taking the course, learners will be able to:

• Identify moments in their everyday work where bridgebuilding can happen
• Explore ways to build trust, belonging, facilitation, and outreach in their work
• Create a simple plan to strengthen and track bridgebuilding efforts in their libraries

The course features short videos from Community of Practice members and animated videos describing bridgebuilding activities that took place at their libraries.  Learners pause several times to reflect on how these concepts apply to their own library, logging them in a workbook.

In the second half of the course, learners explore low-barrier ways to track bridgebuilding and trust outcomes. Community of Practice members share their stories to inspire different approaches to measuring bridgebuilding outcomes. Learners engage by completing two discussion forums. In the first, they post about a current library program, event, or practice that they’d like to improve with bridgebuilding. In the second, they share an experiment plan for testing a change.

For example, one learner noticed a drop in attendance at a teen book club that meets in person on a weekday evening. She wants to test an assumption that transportation is creating a barrier, pitches converting the book club to a virtual event, and then measures the results.  

What course participants are saying

Course testers had these comments about the Introduction to Bridgebuilding course:

• The information presented and the skillful batching and layout of text, images, and video used to present the information were both outstanding, and I would highly recommend this course to anyone in libraries or any community building role.
• I loved the booklet to collect ideas in and that it included the relevant links! I feel like even outside of the course it's a super helpful document to have on hand. It helps me to apply learning to what I'm actually doing.
• I really enjoyed the videos with examples from other library systems. I got some good program ideas from these and also learned a lot about how to analyze the success of a program and bring people together.