Blog

“There's lots of ways that things happen in our county” : Making connections to transform health in Anne Arundel County, Maryland In interviews with library staff and partners about how this goal supports community health, we discovered that this library is not afraid to try new things with partners. In Read More

A Zoom Call to Unite Them All In 2020, Karen Knox, the director of Michigan's Orion Township Public Library realized she needed to transform how her public library communicated and coordinated with the local Parks & Recreation department, during the COVID-19 Pandemic, and beyond. To get that conversation Read More

“Everybody wants everyone else to succeed” in America's third most populous county When Fairbanks Branch Library Assistant Branch Manager Melinda Brinkle  says “everybody wants everyone else to succeed” in Harris County she refers both to 1) everybody within the Harris County Library System and 2) everybody within Harris County Read More

Strike when the iron is hot (and heat it up if it is not!) Michelle Willis is the director of the Scotch Plains Public Library in New Jersey. She’s lived in the community since the age of 15 and has worked her entire career at this library. Throughout Read More

Libraries work because we do! Workplace wellness plants the seed Gale Bacon has been the library director in the city of Belgrade, Montana, since 2006. Gale said, "personally, I'm a strong wellness advocate, I walk my talk, I workout every day, so I see the benefit and the value in Read More

Tell people how the library can partner with them. Around 2016, the Marion Public Library facilitated a community planning meeting focused on the design of a new library building that they intended to create within the next few years. Someone from the Heritage Area on Aging (AAA) came Read More

From Informal Small Town Connections to Strategic Partnerships In the small town of Pella, Iowa, there exists a long tradition of library staff working informally with others to get things done. Jeanette Vaughhn, who oversees Community Services for the town, said over the years she's routinely seen library Read More

Orchestrate and organize to launch and sustain bold new initiatives The success of the Gail Borden Public Library District in Elgin, Illinois comes down to a culture in which library staff are empowered and supported in launching bold new initiatives by changing how they work: Shifting from dedicating Read More

A simple strategy to get started: Empower everyone to be partnering Memphis Public Libraries (MPL) strives to empower all members of its community, including all library employees. MPL has created a number of formal and informal systems and initiatives to try to create a library system where a growth mindsets flourishes at Read More