I joined 30+ people at the first ever Fostering Civic Engagement Member Initiative Group this afternoon. The mission of the FCEMIG, according to the meeting announcement, is to “promote dialogue among librarians interested in learning about and sharing experiences with facilitating deliberative forums and fostering civic engagement in their communities—academic, public and school.” I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but it seemed a good fit with my programming interests, and when I learned that Community Information guru Joan Durrance was present, I knew I was in the right place. The group is the end result of a long-standing interest of ALA past president Nancy Kranich who stated that “democracy is my passion.” She talked about the red/blue sate divide and expressed concern that what has been used as a media catch phrase is a widening, tangible cleft. Kranich, and others present, believe that libraries can bring people of differing beliefs together to bridge this gap through thoughtful, facilitated discussion and other means. It was a rich session that I feel hard-pressed to condense.
Everyone introduced themselves, which took quite awhile, but it was through these introductions that I got a better sense of what this group hopes to accomplish over the next three years. Several folks in attendance are already adherents to the notion of libraries as places of civic engagement and told stories of how they practice what they preach. It was acknowledged that this sort of programming and activity is a hard sell to many librarians, directors and boards. Richard Frieder from Hartford Public Library illustrated how he was able to sell staff on this idea by creating “neighborhood teams” who immerse themselves in specific areas of the community by attending meetings and getting to know people in specific neighborhoods. Their charge is to “listen, learn, and link.” Through this immersion, they are able to hear community members talk about different issues and concerns, then take this information back to the library and figure out how to link materials, services and resources to specific neighborhoods and concerns. In this way, library workers see that they can indeed facilitate civic engagement.
In addition to serving the community, this sort of activity can also serve to promote the role of libraries. Joan Durrance commented that in most communities, anyone can tell you how a library serves children. She hopes that one of the outcomes of the work of this group is that it will enable community members to be able to define what the library is and does for the whole community, not just children.
One of the terrific and surprising things about this group is that there were public, academic, and school librarians present.
The latter part of the meeting addressed how the group should proceed. Several ideas were proferred:
- Is “civic engagement” the right term to use?
- Establish best practices and develop a toolkit
- Use the website (which is in development), email list and possibly a blog to engage and recruit practitioners
- Use existing models for training such as the National Issues Forum (network of conveners/trainers) and prepackaged materials for newbies.
- Present training or programming at Chicago (2005) and beyond
- Show those who are hesitant how they already have the tools and skills to do this—not necessarily focus on just the facilitated forum model
- Partner with other divisions, offices
I went just to listen and see how this connected to my interest in adult programming, but found myself drawn in and hope to be able to lend a hand to the effort.
Tags: ALAMidwinter2005, conferences