![]() *We are grateful to Beth Yoke from the Cincinnati Public Library, who offered this pertinent and notable framing of library staff as public servants. What might equity in library services look like beyond access?.To what extent does your conception of equity in libraries boil down to providing access to library resources and services and in what ways may that reinforce existing power structures?. ![]() As library staff consider services and programs to offer during crises, every decision made should center on the answers to two vital questions (Hughes- Hassell, 2020): Rethink “ why libraries?” during a crisis.Services they should keep, what they should leave behind, and what should be added (Finch, 2020). L et go of legacy programs and services by reflecting on the programs and.Have flexible library policies and structures in place.Realize that equitable services go beyond access to physical materials and the library building.Focus on solutions and not problems by resisting the temptation to get stuck in challenges, instead consider how solutions can be co-created with the community to result in measurable outcomes.Focus on community needs and assets rather than library interests or what they think communities need.To achieve this public servant mindset where library staff make decisions with community members on the programs and services that are needed during crises, staff must: Library servants make decisions for them (Yoke, 2020)*. Public servants make decisions with community members. We define youth as inclusive of ages 0-18.Ī primary requirement to successfully support non-dominant youth and families during times of crisis is to have a mindset centered on community and public service. * Instead of using terms like minority, diverse, or of color, we use the term non-dominant youth because it “…explicitly calls attention to issues of power and power relations…to describe members of differing cultural groups” (Ito, et al., 2013, p7). To learn more about what we learned throughout our work and the impetus for the Field Guide, we encourage you to read our articles published in the School Library Journal (find it on our publications page). While this Field Guide focuses on supporting non-dominant youth and families, we believe it can be adapted to serve the needs of other age groups. ![]() We believe that those using this document will see library staff as a collective “you” in this work. Similarly, throughout this Guide we use the phrase “library staff” and the term “you” interchangeably. We intend this Field Guide to be useful to all library staff, although staff at different levels and with different experiences will use the information within the context of their own work. Through a series of seven virtual participatory design sessions, we co-learned and co-created solutions on how to support communities during crises with library staff serving non-dominant youth * and their families. Staff reacted and provided what they could as events unfolded. Through our work, it became apparent that public library staff aspire to support their communities but do not know how, or rush headlong to design ways to serve their communities. As a result of the multiple crises facing the nation, this work took on an expanded role to focus on the multiple crises facing the country. COVID-19 was the impetus for this work however, as the process launched the country saw increased civic unrest resulting from the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and Dion Johnson. In the summer of 2020, we worked with 137 library staff to learn how they were supporting their communities while library buildings were fully or partially closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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