Reimagine Libraries

Libraries must put in place agile structures that empower staff to perform all the essential tasks highlighted in this guide. Library leadership are not the only ones responsible for creating and maintaining empowering structures. Staff at all levels must play a role. Accomplishing this requires aligning solutions that support community needs with the library’s strategic plan and the overarching priorities of supervisors and administrators. It also requires a true focus on the needs of the community over quick and reactive responses. For example, when library buildings were closed, many libraries instituted curbside and grab-and-go services without prioritizing community-based decision making. These time-intensive services enabled staff to ignore deep-seeded community inequities. Unfortunately, in many cases, this response, as noted by a participant in our co-design sessions, “prioritizes patrons who can easily navigate digital systems, who speak English, who are accustomed to using the library in the ways that white people educated in white institutions design.” Remember, staff do not have to do this alone. They can work with like-minded colleagues to understand priorities and align community-based responses to those priorities. When library structures are agile, all staff have the opportunity to be responsive during crises. Two of the structural areas of import during a crisis are:

1. Responsive policies
   Existing policies may make it difficult to adapt easily and leverage assets to serve critical community needs. For example, in many libraries prior to the pandemic, borrowing policies required visiting the library to receive a library card. However during the 2020 crises, when visiting a building was not possible, libraries revised their policies to provide electronic cards so that community members were able to access electronic services. Similarly, through our work, we learned that many libraries changed fines and fees policies during the crises of 2020. Administrators and staff must swiftly act to rethink policies that may hinder equitable services during emergency times.
2. Flexibility in assignment of staff tasks
   When working with the community to build services that leverage assets, library staff may need to move away from their current roles. Roles that often tie staff to service desks and materials-based activities, such as circulation and readers’ advisory, will need to be replaced with roles that allow staff the opportunities to engage with the community and serve imminent crisis needs. Administrators must rethink job descriptions so that they decisively support the implementation of essential tasks necessary during crisis times and empower staff to work with and for the community.