Editor’s note: This article is based on research reported in a March 2024 article published in JHL.

Background

Back in 2018 I spoke with a fellow librarian colleague during a webinar training session focused on health information literacy. In these conversations, I heard several stories of successful programs or planned programs that sought to connect library patrons with needed library health resources. To my surprise, I learned that a few of these librarians were able to successfully share their resources with their own communities as well as communities beyond their service areas through library partnerships. I found this idea fascinating because it relied on the expertise of diverse peoples with diverse experiences and expertise, impacting communities in a positive way. This sparked my further exploration to know more about library partnerships and learn how I could participate in this meaningful work.

I started my process with gaining approval from my health library director at the time and my local county libraries’ leaders to conduct a survey to see what kind of health information resources and information seeking behaviors our public librarians were engaged in. I learned that our public librarians had a wealth of knowledge and responded to health information literacy questions on a regular basis and did so through training partnerships with outside organizations such as the National Network of Libraries of Medicine.

Fast forward to 2022, my new librarian role introduced me to the idea of conducting my own research and producing my own scholarship. With this new opportunity, I took my previous curiosity about librarians’ support of health information literacy skills for communities through library partnerships and embarked on a literature review to find more concrete examples of the benefits of these partnerships.

Findings

My goals for conducting the literature search were twofold. One goal was to gather examples to share my findings with other librarians and hopefully inspire others to collaborate externally with other libraries. My second goal was to learn from what had already been done to recreate programming and activities within my own library. Subsequently, while reading through the literature and examples of the different types of libraries partnering collaborations, I realized that these partnerships also helped to further core values of librarianship principles1. Partnerships provide a wealth of opportunities and benefits such as promoting public good through engagement of communities, assisting with sustainability efforts, and promoting equal access to resources that further equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts for communities.

From the literature, I discovered that partnerships can strengthen community engagement by bringing people together within their communities, all while strengthening the sustainability efforts of each participating library. By hosting events, workshops, and cultural activities that support the growth of these individuals, public, academic, and health libraries support lifelong learning and skills development. In a health library setting such as mine, these activities can bring people together, including patients, clinicians, nurses, nursing students, and even community members.

I also learned that partnering is smart for long term strategic goals and sustainability. Simply sharing the workload helps ensure each library can continue the work and reach their individually set goals.

Additionally, partnerships can provide the opportunity to share knowledge and strengths that librarians have within each of their respective library types, which can further individual and joint community outreach initiatives and efforts. I found many examples in the literature that highlight how libraries can share knowledge through reciprocated trainings. One such example involves an academic library providing training for public library staff members on utilizing the National Institute of Health’s PubMed database and the public library staff members sharing their knowledge of the information seeking preferences of their communities. Likewise, I began working with my library director to create an online website evaluation training on lateral reading that I planned to share with patterning libraries.

Thinking about the values that libraries bring to their community, it was evident within the readings that libraries and librarian partnership work can impact social change through their amplified reach to their shared communities. By offering resources and programming that is most important to the communities they individually serve, librarians and libraries bring value to their communities. Value is added and increased through libraries partnering to ensure equal access to needed and requested information, training, resources, and programming for all families and individuals.

Conclusion

Simply put, partnerships amplify the reach and impact of advocacy efforts of each of the libraries. Libraries also act as change agents helping their communities embrace our shared humanity by raising awareness about diverse issues and challenges.

I will leave you with a few ideas that I took away from my work learning about library partnerships and areas I am interested in building upon:

Furthering connections: It’s about the people we all work with. Interdisciplinary efforts expand ideas, knowledge, and possibilities.

Participating in librarian-focused and -driven research: More evidenced-based research in this area will only enhance partnership work between libraries. As more published works are shared about these partnering experiences, the more potential there is for communities benefiting from this work.

Looking toward the future, I am excited for further library partnerships and the benefits they bring.

References

“ALA Task Force on United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals,” ALA, accessed November 28, 2023, https://www.ala.org/aboutala/ala-task-force-united-nations-2030-sustainable-development-goals

See Also

Bogino, M. (2024). Increased Community Outcomes or Better Outcomes from Library Partnership: Through an Equity Lens. Journal of Hospital Librarianship, 24(2), 123–129. https://doi.org/10.1080/15323269.2024.2326790

DCT Featured Article – December 10, 2024