When a library involves residents in imagining and learning about future libraries, it helps them understand the excitement and potential of the library as a critical ingredient of the community’s future.

Educators speak of the “educable moment” when a person’s need to learn something provides the motivation to concentrate intently on the topic. A similar moment occurs when the library is in a planning mode. Imagine planning as an educable moment, when residents and potential allies and voters come into the library family and begin to see themselves as having a stake in the future of the library.

An Opportunity to Educate

The Louisville (KY) Design Charrette invited community members to join architects in brainstorming the look and feel of future libraries.

Advocacy through library planning starts when the library informs the community about what it needs. A planning project—whether for a new facility, renovation of a landmark, moving a library, or retrofitting an existing building—offers an opportunity to connect with and educate constituents about how the library can benefit an organization, a group, or a neighborhood. At the same time, constituents learn about how they can help the library achieve its goals and meet community needs.

The library can choose from a variety of formats to do this, from formal presentations, articles in the local newspaper, website communications, meet-ups in local homes, regular briefings, and introductions to planning workshops and focus groups. The process also begins a discussion with the community about the support required to achieve new levels of service.

An Opportunity to Participate

Planning tools include community visioning sessions, small-group workshops, and old-fashioned displays.

Beyond educating the community, library officials and advocates need to involve residents in actual planning. There are numerous formats for this, usually starting with community visioning sessions, in which residents are asked what they would like to see in the future library and how they imagine it might look.

Small-group workshops on particular aspects of library design or planning are another common mode. Many architects conduct community forums to hear from varied constituencies.

Young people can be effectively engaged by participating in initial discussions, offering critiques of plans, or actually working with the designer or architect. In Phoenix, Arizona, teen advisors and an architect designed the library’s highly successful “Teen Central” facility. Today more than 3000 young people use Teen Central each week. They are today’s satisfied library patrons and tomorrow’s library advocates.

The planning process takes on added importance when it has especially high public visibility. Perhaps the projected facility will be the anchor for a community development project; or be part of a creative economies initiative; or be a co-location with a community college or school. Whatever the scope or type of project, planning allows the library to recruit and build relationships with advocates from a range of constituencies.

An Opportunity to Innovate

The new Seattle Public Library interested a wide public in the potential of innovative library design.

Planning also provides a chance to help community members break from old notions about what a library is. The public library is operating in a dynamic environment that demands new physical and virtual spaces and a new balance of physical and virtual services. By involving people in imagining and learning about future libraries, the local library helps them understand the excitement and potential of the library as a critical ingredient of the community’s future. Finally, planning gives library administrators an opportunity to connect with community leaders and community organizations to assess if the library’s goals are aligned with the goals of local governance, local needs, and the local economy.

The momentum of planning projects should not be allowed to dissipate once the project is completed. Following planning, the next task of the library is to sustain ongoing local involvement in and support for the library.

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