Lead the Way: Libraries at the Heart of Community Engagement

Please find us in the hallway outside room 325/326 to pick up your name tag before the keynote address.

Complimentary coffee, tea, and light breakfast items will be available.

Kathy Barri is an enrolled member of Gaa-miskwaabikaang (Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa). Kathy has served as the Library Assistant for the Ginanda Gikendaasomin (We Seek To Learn) Tribal Library since 2018, seeing the library through major changes like a move to a new building in 2021 and joining the Northern Waters Library Network in 2022.

When Kathy originally started as the Library Assistant, her job duties were to “answer the phone, put books on the shelf, create a database, and hold four storytimes with elders.” However, Kathy quickly realized that just because the library was open, didn’t mean that people would come. To increase community interest in the library, Kathy partnered with the tribe’s Early Childhood Center to build a library culture and host storytimes with the young students. Since then, Kathy has become a self-described “collaborating fool,” partnering with tribal members, tribal departments, regional organizations, UW-Madison’s Tribal Libraries, Archives, and Museums program, and more to develop services and programs that promote Ojibwe teachings, language, and culture for the whole Red Cliff community.

Book Clubs, Pubs, and Grub share best practices on co-branding programs within your community. We discuss the lessons learned through neighborhood and community outreach programs.  Examples include - bar and coffee shop-based book clubs, BAM (Books and More - speed round book club during lunch at the local school), Park Popups (storytimes with activities and crafts), and full literary celebrations at locally owned brewpubs.  We share lessons on how to duplicate our successes and circumvent possible roadblocks. At the completion of this session, participants will be able to

1. Recognize community partners, identify commonalities, and create co-branded programming.
2. Utilize best practices to support and empower diverse community partners to ensure mutual success.
3. Incorporate proven outreach techniques to bring library programs into the community.

When an LGBTQIA+ author visit was challenged at Wilmette Public Library, community members activated in support of the library and its dedication to serving all patrons. The community’s timely response was a result of strong partnerships and engagement with organizations that share the library’s equitable values.

How can you turn your library’s DEI goals into safe and meaningful programs that address complex topics and social issues?

Through literature, programs, and expert presenters, the Let’s Learn Together initiative at Wilmette Public Library invites patrons to get curious about subjects relevant to our society and uncover and challenge attitudes and biases. Topics have included race, gender, civic engagement, neurodiversity and more. Presenters will share their collaborative approach, process, and challenges in building and expanding the Let’s Learn Together initiative. They will focus on the importance of collaboration within the library and the role of leadership in facilitating staff training and safety preparedness. They will also share how they developed key community partnerships, which elevated and informed the Let’s Learn Together programming.

Attendees will identify key organizations that share a commitment to relevant topics, learn how to design a comprehensive safety plan to support vulnerable programs, and leverage strategic plan goals to achieve library-wide investment and community support.

The power of public media is that it has been a catalyst for helping children learn key early learning skills, like math, science and reading, right from their homes, for the past five decades. What if libraries leveraged these research-backed, high-quality, free resources to create dynamic learning experiences that were rooted in play? Dive into this engaging session to discover the transformative power of PBS and how easily you can integrate PBS KIDS content into your learning space. PBS Wisconsin Education library ambassadors, coming from rural and urban libraries, bring their expertise, offering practical insights and a treasure trove of ready-to-use resources to elevate your library programming.

Ready to deepen the impact of your library’s Read program? A community Read is a powerful way to spotlight societal concerns for local viewing with book choice and programming. Learn how you can expand the scope of your library Read by creatively engaging area organizations and building regional partnerships in innovative ways. By examining a model of how a city Read initiated by La Crosse Public Library (WI) evolved to include the surrounding area with La Crosse County Library, others throughout nearby states and, eventually, the Winding Rivers Library System, session participants will gain a unique understanding of ways a Regional Read can leverage the power of the local while furthering an inclusive practice that enlivens localities both rural and urban.

Session participants will engage in creative workshopping activities that help identify potential Read partnerships within and across their communities, as well as timely book topics and programming ideas.

Libraries play a vital role in community engagement, and ensuring community events are accessible to people with disabilities is critical. In this session, you’ll learn best practices for planning inclusive events that meet the needs of all participants, how to advocate for accessibility, and what to do when a new need arises. We’ll explore how to find community partners who can support your inclusive efforts and discuss common challenges in creating truly welcoming spaces. Accessible event planning guides will be shared to help you apply these strategies effectively. Join us to ensure your library’s community events are both welcoming and accessible to everyone in the community.

Join fellow librarians as we dive into community engagement within rural and tribal communities. This session will be moderated Kellee Forkenbrock. Kellee will kick things off with some guiding questions, but please bring your own questions and ideas.

This is a discussion session so please come ready to be an active participant.

Join us as we explore how urban and suburban libraries can connect patrons with valuable community resources. This session will be moderated by Kimberly Schlarman and Janet McIntyre.  Please bring your own questions, ideas, and challenges to the discussion. 

This is a discussion session so please come ready to be an active participant.

If you prepaid for lunch as part of your registration, please go to the Alumni Lounge on the first floor of the Pyle Center.

For those not receiving a conference lunch, we encourage you to check out the nearby food trucks and restaurants on State Street!

Please leave your preconceptions of a traditional outreach or program at the door. Today, we’ll explore how two library marketing professionals’ craving for slowness spawned a multigenerational, neurodiverse community craft gathering — the Racine Public Library’s Stitch N Bitch — in three stages.

“See yourself as part of your community.” The impulse to position yourself as the “presenter” or “guide” of a program for a separate community artifices a divide between library workers and program attendees. When you position yourself instead as a patron of your own program, and craft an experience with your needs and desires as the spark, your gathering will be more flexible and communal.

“To let it grow, let it be.” The Stitch N Bitch launched with big aspirations but very low structure. Because we moved at our own pace and didn’t immediately fill the space with our own vision, we cultivated with our fellow attendees a neurodiverse, multigenerational crafting space where both library staff and patrons built relationships.

“Sustainable growth is interdependent.” The Racine Public Library’s fiber offerings now include three regular fiber arts programs, a multi-organization communal quilting project, and an overflowing selection of free crafting supplies for visitors. This growth called for more structure so we could protect the work’s joy and flexibility while adding to it in a healthy, sustainable way. We found this structure in new interdependence with local crafters and trusting each other’s feedback to meet our needs by adjusting the pace.

This session will cover the basics of what you need to plan a starter community engagement program, tools and ideas to supplement your program, and the building blocks for how to grow it.

Please bring your fiber crafts with you to stitch along with us as we present for today’s session!

Post-COVID, our library experienced a significant increase in disruptive teen behaviors in our library and we also noticed a significant rise in food insecurity. We piloted a project with donated prepacked snacks where teens were offered a snack upon entering the teen space prior to engaging with any of the programming or resources in the space. Within a short timespan we saw a significant decline in disruptive behavior and our usage numbers for the space increased. We worked quickly to gain community resources and developed a nutrition component to the program to educate the teens on food choices and how bodies process nutrients. We gained data to show the gap in the community in providing direct food to teens through partnership with local food banks who discovered that they weren't serving teens. Attendees will learn how we took the problem of poor teen behavior from incident reports and addressed it with fighting food insecurity. They will also learn how to engage and advocate with community partners and funders around a service not often provided in libraries, but a population that is welcomed in libraries more than elsewhere in the community and lastly they will learn how to change the message of what a library is to build a community of support around a common community challenge.

Are you a radical librarian? Does your work in libraries advance systemic change centered on social and racial equity, leverage and enhance collective action and community power, and support community building and public participation? Join in a discussion about what radical librarianship is and how it is activated across the state of Wisconsin. 
 
Appleton Public Library and Racine Public Library were both selected to participate in UCLA California Rare Book School’s 2023 Radical Librarianship Institute. The program included a week-long intensive institute at UCLA and a $10,000 grant to each library to create a community-rooted project. Presenters will share the concepts taught at the institute and the corresponding applications in their community projects.
 
Program attendees will create their own plans for engaging in radical librarianship at their libraries. The plans will include strategies for creating a compelling vision that inspires granting agencies to provide financial support and tools for how to meaningfully engage potential stakeholders, especially those who historically have not been very engaged by the library.

A public library in rural Wisconsin developed an oral health information resource tailored to under-served Amish and Anabaptist communities. You will learn 1) how the project was conceived in collaboration with the Network of the National Library of Medicine and the Wisconsin State Advisory Group, 2) how the activity book was designed in consultation with community elders, a dental student, and local artists for cultural relevance, age-appropriateness, and ease of comprehension, and 3) how the resource was presented to and received by three parochial schools. As a bonus, you will learn how to download, print, and share this free resource with your own communities!

Join your fellow conference attendees in the Alumni Lounge on the first floor for enjoy beautiful views of Lake Mendota, good conversation, and a tasty nacho bar.