Community Partners

Community engagement is an ongoing commitment every library director and library board member should consider incorporating into their workflow. What it will look like will depend on you, your library, and your community.

While there is no one pathway for developing community engagement which every library can follow, there are many resources providing a variety of tools, so library directors and board members working with their community stakeholders, can create a successful community engagement plan.

Community Resources

These four areas — Education, Economic Development, Workforce Development, and Basic Needs – contain contacts in your region of Idaho. These are agencies and organizations whose mission complements the mission of libraries: to serve the community. This is not, by any means a complete list, but is meant to help you get started in identifying viable partnerships for your library.

Click the region on the map or link.

Idaho Regions Map

Click the region on the map or link.

Idaho Regions Map

Click the region on the map or link.

Idaho Regions Map

Click the region on the map or link.

Idaho Regions Map

Why is this important?

Today’s world of information is changing quickly. It has always been a tough road to go alone, but today even more so.

Building collaborative partnerships with other like-minded organizations in your community can maximize the impact of your library’s long-term vision. Regardless of the size of your library, you need to be engaged in community activities so the library can be part of the solution in meeting the needs.

Engaging others in the community can help the director and the library board keep the library relevant, regardless of the fast-changing world in which we live

Community engagement builds strong communities which in turn impact the use and viability of the local public library.

Here are some basic tips

The library is a part of the community. It is not all about the library. It is about the community and the role the library can play to support a healthy community.

Identify who in your community should be connected to the library. Who in your community is interested in building a healthy, strong community.

Make a commitment as a director and board member to maintain the activities of community engagement as an ongoing part of your responsibility as a library director and board member.

Think big, but realistic. What relationships can you build and successfully maintain? Keeping the conversation going is important so individuals can be heard and contribute. Ask “What if…?”

Reach out to your state library agency for guidance and support as needed. For individuals in Idaho, please contact the staff at Idaho Commission for Libraries

Use your library community connections to discover what other communities are doing. Learn from your colleagues – or better yet, if your communities are close geographically, work together.

How do I get Started?

Here are links to three resources that libraries have used. Each site provides materials to download to help facilitate either individual or group conversations. One resource may not have all the tools to fill your needs. Be sure to review all three and use what fits your community.

  1. Orton Community Heart & Soul Field Guide
  2. Turning Outward Resources for Libraries from American Library Association’s Initiative “Libraries Transforming Community”
  3. Aspen Institute Action Guide 2.0

One value of these tools is your ability to customize them to the local context and needs of your community. They are valuable as supports for you and your partners in moving towards healthy communities.

Community Partner Possibilities

The following types of organizations are possible community partners. Begin by attending a community-wide meeting as well as requesting a conversation with a community organization leader. Ask questions, listen.

  • Service Clubs: Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions, Jaycees, Optimists
  • Social service: food bank, housing support, legal support, social work service provider, health care, United Way, Commission on Aging, Department of Health and Welfare
  • Education: schools, computer coding organization, STEM Action Center, University of Idaho Extension, day care, home school co-op
  • Community: parks and rec, Boys and Girls Club, environmental awareness organization
  • Arts: children’s theater, music education, Commission on the Arts
  • Business: Chamber of Commerce, Small Business Administration, prominent local employer
  • Economic development: apprenticeship program, Department of Labor, regional economic development board, Department of Commerce
  • Cultural institutions: museum, archive, historical society, Idaho Humanities Council
  • Law enforcement: police, sheriff, Department of Corrections

General Partnership Principles

Introduction

Successful library leaders in Idaho partner with local and statewide organizations for deeper community impact. Shared visions with an accompanying set of collaborative strategies among thoughtful partners leads to healthy transformations in library customers, families, and communities. This page and linked resource collections will support library directors, library boards of trustees, and program leaders in your investments in partnership design.

Identifying & Developing a Partnership

The generation of a partnership begins with a clear understanding of community needs. As a library staff and board, listen to your customers as they relate concerns, needs, aspirations, and dreams for themselves and for your community as a whole. This needs assessment generates a list of potential issues, topics, themes, and general needs from which a set of partners with expertise and resources related to those needs is created. Conversing with a potential partner is a deliberate endeavor, whether the partner is well known or brand new, eventually resulting in a set of shared goals and strategies or a sense that the timing of the partnership is perhaps for some time in the future.

Community partnerships are possible across many facets of community topical needs: workforce development, education, economic development, basic needs, for example. Partnerships cohere from arts, education, cultural, law enforcement, environmental, social service, and commercial organizations.

Evaluation of a Partnership

As with any library program or service, an intentional evaluation component is critical to success. Evaluating community partnerships follows a typical practice of first identifying agreed upon shared outcomes and the related activities, inputs, and outputs to support those outcomes. A healthy partnership will invest time at reflective moments, starting early on in the partnership, reviewing progress towards outcomes. Evaluation of that progress leads to possible course correction and affirmation of effort. Evaluation also permits partners to reaffirm commitment or agree on drawing the partnership to a healthy close. Sharing out lessons, learnings, and successes with the Idaho library community allows a local partnership example to inform peers in other parts of the state.

The Idaho Commission for Libraries consultants are your thought partners in designing, developing, deploying, and evaluating community partnerships. Give us a call, starting with the contact information below.