So much talk about civic engagement. So little talk about the library. It’s time to marry the two. The Action Guide for Re-Envisioning Your Public Library is an action-focused tool to help libraries and community leaders re-envision and reposition both large and small public libraries as hubs and networks of community purpose.

The Action Guide challenges your library to ask the questions that enable re-envisioning to occur. In well-organized and easy-to-follow steps, the guide describes the library as

• People, building human capital, relationships, and knowledge networks in the community.
• Place, drawing people together and providing a safe and trusted location for such community services as health clinics, emergency response centers, small business incubators, workforce development centers, and immigrant resource centers.
• Platform, facilitating many people operating individually or in groups and supporting the learning goals and needs of the community.
• Civic resource, supporting government service delivery, engaging citizens in the governing process, and creating new opportunities to bring people of different backgrounds together to solve problems and build stronger communities.
• Literacy champion, providing the access, skills, context, and trusted platform needed to navigate information abundance, interact with technology devices and content, filter massive amounts of information, and select the right tools for knowledge creation and management.

Each section of the Action Guide is loaded with probing questions whose answers point you to an understanding of what it means to transform your library into a key partner in all aspects of community life. The guide walks library leaders through an assessment that culminates in the convening of dialogues with key library stakeholders. As one of those key stakeholders, local government professionals have a role to play: helping to position libraries as partners in the learning and innovation that drive the economic and cultural vitality of the community.

The Action Guide, a working tool from the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program, is akin to a strategic action plan loaded with important questions that logically lead to

• Engaging community leaders.
• Convening a public dialogue.
• Moving forward with next steps.

The guide recognizes that in the re-envisioned library, technology is a core competency, not just a service offered to patrons. The guide also mentions a new website, http://www.LibraryVision.org, rich with supporting resources. Both the guide and website offer an abundance of relevant examples of ways in which the Action Guide has been put to work, including the experiences of the 23 libraries that piloted the guide.

Share this Action Guide with your library leaders! They’ll appreciate having an effective tool with which to forge a sustainable future.

More on Libraries

Be sure to take a look at these PM magazine articles about the strength of libraries:

• “Check Out the New Library,” by Craig Gerhard and Kira Hasbargen, Public Management, May 2014, page 6.
• “Strengthening the Library’s Strategic Role,” by Rashad Young and Susan Benton, Public Management, September 2015, page 6.

Also see the libraries topic page in ICMA’s Knowledge Network for additional resources and discussion, including

• “Maximize the Potential of Your Public Library,” a 2011 report on the innovative ways public libraries are addressing community priorities.