Conference rethinks public outreach
Whether it’s to help citizens become politically involved or improve children’s reading scores, libraries need to reach beyond their comfort zones to engage with the community, a conference on metropolitan libraries heard last week.
The 2015 terror attacks in Paris brought 300,000 people into the streets of Lyon, France, said Étienne Mackiewicz, the assistant director of cultural action and communication for Montreal’s municipal library.
To honour the victims of Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, the library held an exhibition of political cartoons. But administrators sensed a need to go further in addressing the turbulent political climate, including the rise of populist parties across the West.
With the approach of France’s presidential election, which centrist Emmanuel Macron won in the second round Sunday, the library organized a series of activities on the theme of democracy from November to March.
“We wanted to act to promote the library as a living place, as a forum in the city,” Mackiewicz told a roundtable on library partnerships. It was part of the annual meeting of the Metropolitan Libraries Section of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, held at the Grande Bibliothèque on Berri St.
The Lyon library joined forces with an online newspaper, university, bookstore chain and regional education authority to hold conferences, workshops, debates, exhibitions and webcasts and live tweet events, he said.
Titled Démocratie: rêver, penser, agir ensemble (Democracy: dream, think, act together), the program aimed to provide people with tools to participate in politics, Mackiewicz said. It culminated in a democracy forum March 10-12.
“We wanted to be constructive, to be positive, so all citizens, of all ages, could walk into the library to reflect about how they would commit themselves and contribute to the city,” he said.
But isn’t wading into politics a departure from libraries’ usual non-partisan role? Mackiewicz said organizers were careful not to promote any particular view or party, focusing instead on empowering citizens to get involved.
“As an institution we have an obligation of neutrality. But we still wanted to make a stand,” Mackiewicz said.
While the library remained neutral, Lyon’s Socialist mayor, Gérard Collomb, has been a prominent supporter of Macron.
Susan Benton, president and chief executive of the Urban Libraries Council in Washington, D.C., described an initiative by the former Obama administration to provide every child in 60 communities across the United States with a library card.
“About 66 per cent of our children are not reading at grade level in fourth grade,” she said.
The cash-strapped education system can’t solve that problem on its own, she noted. So libraries forged partnerships with municipalities and schools to boost child memberships.
Trying to get a library card into the hands of each child was a challenge, said Carolyn Anthony, the former director of the public library in Skokie, Ill., one of the communities targeted by the initiative.
School districts often have different boundaries from library districts, and privacy laws prevent schools from sharing information on students, she noted.
Also, libraries often require parents’ signature for a child to have a library card. But many parents are too busy to visit the library with their children, she said.
To reach every child in the multicultural community of 65,000, near Chicago, the library used strategies such as setting up a table in schools on parent-teacher nights. The program had a positive impact on reading scores, particularly for students who took out books over their summer vacation, Anthony said.
“What we found is students in the summer reading program either maintained or improved their scores, while the rest had summer slide,” she said, and the initiative also built stronger links between the library and local schools.
“I think we’re seen as more essential to the whole learning process.”
Under the Trump presidency, the initiative has put more emphasis on local leadership rather than depending on the federal government, Benton said.
“We certainly know that this president and administration are not really focused on education, to say the least,” she said.
Local organizers said the conference’s theme of library partnerships was inspired by the Grande Bibliothèque, built by the Quebec government in collaboration with the city of Montreal. The library works hand-in-hand with not-forprofit organizations, school boards and private sponsors, noted Ivan Filion, director of Montreal’s library system.
Partnership “has always been important, but we’re realizing more and more that if we truly want to reach our citizens, we have right here on our territory people who share the same mission,” he said. “Resources are too limited to be in competition with one another. So we have to say, ‘let’s work together.’”
For example, the library holds the Montreal Joue video festival in February and March in conjunction with the video gaming industry, he said.
“It’s not only the money they contribute, but it’s also the expertise,” he said.
Danielle Chagnon, director general of the Grande Bibliothèque, said partnership is key to the library’s success.
“What sets us apart in Montreal is the way we work together,” she said.
“We couldn’t do all the things we do if we didn’t do it together.”