Reflection & Analysis

Community relations and advocacy was one of the classes I was most excited about. Outreach is a huge part of my position. In general, outreach and community engagement are cornerstones to modern library practices. Books and other information materials can be found in a number of places outside of a library. In order for libraries to keep up to date, understanding their needs outside of providing access to materials is important.  Community outreach is a way to show community members that libraries are still relevant places. The services many libraries offer reach far outside of books and media, as many people still believe. They now offer homework help, fun activities, and other services to support the neighborhoods they're in.

Community engagement and outreach is why I serve with organizations such as the Greater Tulsa African American Affairs Commission and the Rotary Club of North Tulsa. Organizations like these provide me with opportunities to really get out into the community to meet the members, to learn about their history, and to understand their relationship to the libraries that serve them. These clubs have also helped to supplement my knowledge of community outreach by giving me the opportunity to think outside of my service area and learn how to support other branches. For example, the artifact for this class was a plan for a program for the Suburban Acres Library. It is a library just a few miles north of Rudisill Library, where I work, but the needs and interests of the community are different. In this class, I learned how to study data that is provided by the library (such as a branch profile) and community surveys to learn about the demographics of a library community and potential needs or program ideas. From there, I spoke with a librarian at the library to understand how programming works and the ways in which she finds out what the interests of their library demographic are. That gave me space to come up with a full plan that was aligned to the needs of the branch and the branch's main demographic. It also thought about ways to bring in community partners instead of fully doing it as simply a library program because libraries are community spaces, and the partnerships are important.

This class equipped me with better language and communication around how to advocate for the needs of community members, such as with the memos present in the plan, as well as how to include them (the community) in the process. I came out of this class with an understanding of how to effectively plan a full-scale program that will provide support from various angles as well as potentially see branch growth. It was a fun program to plan, and I'd like to work to actually get it done.