The Roles of the Library

What roles can libraries take to foster youth civic engagement? The Urban Library Council described 5 meaningful ways for libraries to become centers (both physically and metaphorically) of civic engagement:

Become a Civic Educator	Raise awareness of civics, civic engagement, and civic responsibility.
Become a Conversation Starter	Identify challenging community issues, creating forums for sharing opinions, and developing action strategies.
Become a Community Bridge	Bring diverse people, including local government officials, and organizations with different perspectives together to build stronger communities.
Become a Visionary	Lead efforts to develop a broad and inclusive community vision.
Become a Center for Democracy in Action	Walk, talk, think, and act as the place where democracy, civic engagement, and public discourse happen.

Example: Dallas Public Library

The central library of the Dallas Public Library created a Homeless Engagement Initiative that features a range of services for the homeless (e.g. job application assistance, housing referral) and, importantly, programs that “promote social interaction and inclusion” with the broader community – such as art exhibits, music classes, a Street View podcast and other innovative activities.

The program matches the description of a meaningful civic engagement program by hitting the attributes in we mentioned in the previous sections.

• Not just about political action: Focused on working with the local homeless community
• Different from community service: The project went beyond providing basic services to the community, and worked towards deepening relationships within it
• Agency: Through the different programs like the podcast, the exhibition and so forth, members of the community were given the opportunity to find agency and use it to strengthen the ties between them
• Deliberate: The initiative was focused on a specific population, and approached their situation from several different perspectives and techniques
• Consistent: This initiative and its follow ups required prolonged action over an extended period of time.
• Equitable: The initiative was designed to help the community to get to know the homeless population in all its aspects, and come together to hear their stories
• Quality of life: By enhancing the quality of life for one part of the community, everyone is uplifted

Library staff at the Dallas Public Library took on the roles of being a:

• Conversation Starter: the staff saw the community issues and developed services surrounding those topics
• Community Bridge: the library staff brought diverse people together to build stronger communities
• Visionary: with these services, the library staff led efforts to develop a broad and inclusive community vision

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