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Building Community in Brevard County, FL. No. 9.19.2009. 124.

Friday, September 18th, 2009

In announcing the foundation’s fund drive last spring, Executive Director Ned Kellar noted that cutting one day of service each week would result in the loss of more than 1,700 contacts with children and 400 contacts with older adults over a year’s time.

Negroni-Hendrick Mobile Library

Thanks to generous contributions from Brevard Library Foundation members, local individuals and businesses, the colorful Negroni-Hendrick Mobile Library will return to a full schedule of service in the community this fall.

Earlier this year, budget constraints forced Brevard County Library Services to trim one day off the full four-day-a-week schedule of bringing books and literary programs to young children and older adults who cannot easily come into one of the counties’ 17 libraries.

Community building isn’t just bricks or infrastructure..sometimes it is placing materials heart to heart and hand to hand from one group to another.

Posted in McCook Model, community building | No Comments »

A Decade of Community Building and Libraries. No. 8.1.2009. 106.

Saturday, August 1st, 2009

I’m working on a Community Building course and reflecting on the decade of community building discussions in librarianship.

Some resources:

Inside, Outside, and Online: Building Your Library Community
Chrystie Hill. 2009. Publisher: ALA Editions.

Sarah Long-ALA Presidential theme.

When I was president of the American Library Association in 1999-2000, I chose, “Libraries Build Community” as my theme because I felt strongly that the library always serves a special place in the community. It’s not only a place to find information and knowledgeable librarians, it’s also a place to be with other community members. Think of the library as a community’s living room.

A Librarian at the Kitchen Table blog.

A Librarian at Every Table website.

Go to: McCook Model for an overview of community building and libraries.

Join this mailing list:
a-librarian-at-every-table — Libraries, librarians and community building.

A Place at the Table: Participating in Community Building
Kathleen de la Peña McCook, 2000. Publisher: ALA Editions.
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The column “Community Building” appeared in the ALA journal Reference and User Services Quarterly from 2000-2006.

RUSQ Community Building columns:
Volume 40, Number 1
“Librarians and Comprehensive Community Initiatives”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Volume 40, Number 2
“Service Integration and Libraries: Will 2-1-1 be the Catalyst for Renewal?”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Volume 40, Number 3
“Community Building and Latino Families”
Marcela Villagrán, Guest Columnist

Volume 40, Number 4
“Community Indicators, Genuine Progress, and the Gold Billion”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook and Kristen Brand, Guest Columnist

Volume 41, Number 1
“Collaboration Generates Synergy: Saint Paul Public Library, the College of St. Catherine, and the ‘Family Place’ Program”
Carol P. Johnson, Ginny Brodeen, Helen Humeston,
and Rebecca McGee, Guest Columnists

Volume 41, Number 2
“Authentic Discourse as a Means of Connection Between Public Library Services Responses and Community Building Initiatives”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Volume 41, Number 3
“Service to Day Laborers: A Job Libraries Have Left Undone”
Bruce Jensen, Guest Columnist

Volume 41, Number 4
“Cultural Heritage Institutions and Community Building”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook and Marla A. Jones, Guest Columnist

Volume 42, Number 1
“The African-American Research Library and Cultural Center
of the Broward County Library”
Henrietta M. Smith, Guest Columnist

Volume 42, Number 2
“Alaska Resources Library and Information Services: Building Community in the Forty-Ninth State”
Juli Braund-Allen and Daria O. Carle, Guest Columnists

Volume 42, Number 3
“Sustainable Communities and the Roles Libraries and Librarians Play”
Frederick W. Stoss, Guest Columnist

Volume 42, Number 4
“Using a Homeless Shelter as a Library Education Learning Laboratory: Incorporating Service-Learning in a Graduate-Level Information Sources and Services in the Social Sciences Course”
Lorna Peterson, Guest Columnist

Volume 43, Number 1
“Suppressing the Commons: Misconstrued Patriotism vs. a Psychology of Liberation”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Volume 43, Number 2
“Transformations of Librarianship in Support of Learning Communities”
Eino Sierppe, Guest Columnist

Volume 43, Number 3
“A Passion for Connection: Community Colleges Fulfill the Promise
of Cultural Institutions”
Carmine J. Bell, Guest Columnist

Volume 43, Number 4
“Community, Identity, and Literature”
Elaine Yontz, Guest Columnist

Volume 44, Number 1
“Public Libraries and People in Jail”
Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Volume 44, Number 2
“A Digital Library to Serve a Region: The Bioregion and First Nations Collections of the Southern Oregon Digital Archives”
Mary Jane Cedar Face and Deborah Hollens, Guest Columnists

Volume 44, Number 3
“The Homeless and Information Needs and Services”
Julie Hersberger, Guest Columnist

Volume 44, Number 4
“Building Lead-Free Communities”
Frederick W. Stoss, Guest Columnist

Volume 45, Number 1
“Human Rights and Librarians”
Kathleen de la Pena McCook and Katherine J. Phenix, Guest Columnist

Volume 45, Number 2
“Poverty, Poor People, and Our Priorities”
John Gehner, Guest Columnist
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Posted in McCook Model, community building | No Comments »

“McCook Model” for Community Building for Libraries. 1. 24.2009. 19.

Saturday, January 24th, 2009

The “McCook Model” — a multi-dimensional commitment to community building for libraries — is cited in chapter 5 of Library Board Strategic Guide: Going to the Next Level by Ellen G. Miller and Patricia H. Fisher.
In : “Getting on Your Community’s Leadership Team” Mill and Fisher cite Seattle Public Library Director, Deborah L. Jacobs:

The Seattle Public Library uses McCook’s model daily, “We are leaning toward making ‘outreach’–as in A Place at the Table–part of regular performance expectations for all managers…Eventually it is our goal to make it part of all employee work-plans since everyone has a role to9 play in making the library a key community player.

Posted in McCook Model, community building | No Comments »

“Previously offered by a formal library?” Philadelphia: Repurposing Libraries as ‘Knowledge Centers?’ No. 1.3. 2009. 2.

Saturday, January 3rd, 2009

Just what is–a community supported model for maintaining important community services previously offered by a formal library?
?

Bruce Jensen at Multicultural Link has written with a clear analysis that

no matter where you are: news this week from the mayor’s office that, in the wake of public outcry, he’s not exactly going to close all those libraries—instead, some of them will be repurposed into “knowledge centers.“

Philadelphia targeted 11 libraries for closure, at an estimated savings of $8 million a year, as part of its effort to address a projected $1 billion five-year budget deficit. While the closure is in litigation , Mayor Nutter has stated it hurts his efforts to get private funding to reopen some of the targeted branches as community based learning centers.

“This ruling runs the risk of significantly hampering our efforts to get the re-use plans in order,” he said, “because it has now caused a chill in some of those discussions and created a tremendous amount of confusion with potential funders.”

Among the options the administration is exploring is to have the funding channeled through nonprofit community-development corporations and other private sources.

At least one proposal calls for the New Kensington Community Development Corporation to take over the Fishtown Community Library as a “nascent model of the library of the future” under a long-term lease.

Now is the time when the McCook Model discussed at the A Librarian at Every Table needs to be explored in depth. Are there librarians active on the Kensington Area Neighborhood Advisory Committee ? There should be.

Posted in McCook Model, community building, public libraries | No Comments »

The Cultural Amenities Project. No. 1.10.2008.13.

Thursday, January 10th, 2008

The Cultural Amenities Project is a two-year project, led by Cultural Policy Center Director Larry Rothfield and University of Chicago Sociologist Terry Clark. The Project will go beyond previous studies to analyze the impact of cultural amenities on cities. Professors Rothfield and White will lead a study of cultural amenities in the nation’s 350 MSAs which will identify indicators of “cultural scenes” and add these to the “cultural industries database.” Among the categories to be studied are: public art and architecture, community-based arts, night-life arts, literary amenities, high arts, sports and natural amenities.

“ Bohemian Rhapsody ” an article in NewChicago.com expands on the study and its effort to answer, “what makes a neighborhood bohemian in the first place?”

I have not been able to discover the level of inclusion of libraries as cultural amenities from the CPC website or NewChicago article, but have written to the authors. The role of libraries in community building and culture remains a key interest of this blog. I’ll let you know if I hear back from the CPC, but meanwhile here are two books that address the role of libraries in cultural communities:

Deborah A. Robertson’s Cultural Programming for Libraries: Linking Libraries, Communities and Culture.

[ALA,2005].

Kathleen de la Peña McCook’s A Place at the Table: Participating in Community Building [ALA,2000].

Posted in McCook Model, community building, cultural heritage | No Comments »

A Librarian at the Kitchen Table.
Thursday, May 31st, 2007

Jenny Levine at The Shifted Librarian said:

There’s been a lot of talk online lately about finding the time to keep up

In the comments section I reviewed my own efforts hoping to show how changes happen in one’s online life for technical, political and social justice reasons.

You are right to help us try to understand what we do, why we do it, and to what degree we impose levels of responsibility on ourselves. Changes happen in one’s online life for technical, political and social justice reasons.

I had a long and varied journey vis-a-vis my blog, A Librarian at the Kitchen Table, which began life as a BOOK I started writing in 1998 called A Place at the Table. In that book I developed a model for librarians to be supported in community involvement [McCook Model].
After the book was published in 2000 I began a quarterly column in RUSQ called, “Community Building.”
Because the material I collected so great I began a 3x a week electronic mailing list in 2001 with a companion website A Librarian at Every Table to continue to develop the community building model.
I made kept that e-mail list going (and archived) from July 2001-December 2004 until I was worn out and couldn’t sleep worrying that I might not fulfill this obligation I had made to community building. Actually, as the Bush years wore on with more and more anxiety I began refocusing on issues of human rights and social justice. So in a small way the “A Librarian at Every Table” electronic list was a way to fight back against the Bush disinformation with true information. Finally in November 2004 I made a switch to blogging the list, A Librarian at Every Table, but continued to try for multiple-weekly postings.
In April 2006 to reflect thre growing economic crisis in the U.S. economy, I changed the name of the blog to A Librarian at the Kitchen Table. I decided that use the metaphor of sitting at the kitchen table to rethink how librarians can help return the nation to our democratic principles.
This change was 13 months ago. I now blog about once a week at A Librarian at the Kitchen Table.

Posted in American Library Association, KdlPMcC, McCook Model, community building, social justice | No Comments »

“A Librarian at the Kitchen Table” Explained. No. 3.5. 2007. 43.
Monday, March 5th, 2007

One of my other blogs, A Librarian at the Kitchen Table, has been included in an article in the March 2007 issue of American Libraries.

It has been nearly a year since the focus of the blog that supported the website A Librarian at Every Table changed– as explained in the initial post of the new series reprinted below.

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Eating in the Kitchen. “A Librarian at Every Table Ends.” No. 349.

April 27, 2006.

When I wrote the book, A Place at the Table, in 1999-2000 I did not realize that the boundless hope I felt for the future of the people of the United States and our relations with the world was about to be altered George W. Bush . I wrote about community connections, empowerment and enterprise. I saw in Al Gore with his commitment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Treaty a real hope for the world to advance to a better way with the United States as a leader.

But the destruction of the democratic process in 2000 with the Supreme Court appointment of GWBush; the war on Iraq ; and the U.S. government’s failures to help the people of the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita –people were still being found dead at this writing in April 2006–have made me reconsider how I can be of help in focusing on issues.

I have begun another blog–Union Librarian–because I feel now that only by organizing can people have a voice to stand up to a government that carries out torture and out-sourcing of torture–rendition and squanders the economic well-being of everyday people with with tax-cuts to the wealthy.

In my work with community organizations the movement to the “faith-based” model has made it very difficult to continue promoting community connections for me because I believe in the separation of church and state .

I have begun to teach a new course on Human Rights and Librarians. The “Community Building” column I edited for References and User Services Quarterly was discontinued by the new editor. The last column,
“Libraries Rebuilding Community in Louisiana After the Hurricanes of 2005″ [by Alma Dawson and Kathleen de la Peña McCook] was published in summer 2006.

July 9, 2006 marked the 5-year anniversary of the Librarian at Every Table website and the initial mail list (there are still over 700 subscribers) and I will no longer publish “A Librarian at Every Table.” I have sent the older issues to the American Library Association archives because I think that library historians will look back at the change of the millennium [1999-2000 period] and community building ALA presidents, Sarah Long and Nancy Kranich, as the end of an era….tho a change of administration in 2009 may mean renewal. We msut keep the canfle burning.
There is much to think about. It is difficult to try to sit at the community table in 2006 because the others sitting there have changed.

Poor people are not there.
People who believe in reproductive freedom are not there.
Migrant workers are not there.
People who believe in a separation of church and state are not there.
People who believe in Gay Rights are not there.
People who believe in affirmative action are not there.
People who believe in peace are not there.

It is time to go sit at the kitchen table and rethink how librarians can help return this nation to our democratic principles in line with the original model (McCook Model, I developed in A Place at the Table ).
Future issues of the blog A Librarian at Every Table will be called
A Librarian at the Kitchen Table.

[However, numbering will be continuous].

–Kathleen de la Peña McCook

Posted in George W. Bush, KdlPMcC, Librarian at Every Table, McCook Model, Progressive Librarians Guild, War in Iraq, community building, human rights, peace, war crimes | Comments Off

Librarian and Librarianship Blogs in American Libraries. No. 3.3.2007. 41.
Saturday, March 3rd, 2007

I received a request on January 24, 2007 to participate in an American Libraries exploration of librarian blogging.

The results appear in the March 2007 issue in the article, “Mattering in the Blogosphere.”

The blogs included are:

BLAKE CARVER, LISNews
NICOLE ENGARD, What I Learned Today
ROCHELLE HARtMAN, Tinfoil+ Raccoon
SARAH HOUGHtON-JAN, Librarian in Black
JENNY LEVINE, The Shifted Librarian
KATHLEEN DE LA PEñA McCOOK,
Librarian at the Kitchen Table
MARY MINOW, Library Law.
JOSHUA M. NEFF, Goblin in the Library
JACK StEPHENS, Conservator
JESSAMYN WESt, Librarian. net

American Libraries(CB). American Libraries (Volume 38, Issue 3, March 2007).

===========

This is my full response.

Kathleen de la Peña McCook’s LIST of Blogs & e-discussion lists.

My evolution as a blogger was a journey from print, to discussion lists to websites and website archives and finally to a three daily blogs. As a teacher I have at once participated in and parsed the process. I wrote about my dawning recognition of the importance of blogs (ca. 1999) in “Library Juice Concentrate [A Book for die Jahrtausendwende] “as preface to Library Juice Concentrate edited and mostly written by Rory Litwin, publisher, Library Juice Press.

====================

BLOG #1 -LIBRARIAN

I began blogging in my first blog—LIBRARIAN-- when the political landscape made it difficult to criticize the government in mainstream periodicals. That is, no one was accepting criticism. ALA was giving Laura Bush awards and putting Laura Bush on the cover of American Libraries…

I blogged a great deal about Jeb Bush’s attacks on Florida’s libraries.

The Story of How Jeb Bush and Judy Ring Failed to Close the State Library of Florida. No. 6.5.2003-2.

LIBRARIAN blog [the blog you are reading now] has an ISSN [ISSN 1932-8559] and is my primary blog where I write about human rights, libraries, librarians, books and culture.

The entry I did that has gotten the most hits was this one:

Leaving the American Library Association Conference Early.

No. 6.17.2006-107.
==================

BLOG #2: A LIBRARIAN AT THE KITCHEN TABLE

I also blog as a way to extend ideas from my bigger projects. After I did the book, A Place at the Table (ALA, 2000) I was asked to make many presentations on the “McCook Model” of community building at library conferences.

.

To extend the conversation I began an e-mail discussion list and Website–.

A Librarian at Every Table--

After I sent out over 350 entries about LIBRARIES & HUMAN RIGHTS and SOCIAL: JUSTICE & COMMUNITY, these entries were archived on the LIBRARIAN AT EVERY TABLE website.

But then adopting to new communication I began to blog about COMMUNITY BUILDING at the blog

A Librarian at the Kitchen Table.

My first post on my blog A Librarian at the Kitchen Table: Explained the transition:

A Librarian at the Kitchen Table is part of the HUMAN RIGHTS BLOGGING NETWORK

==================

BLOG #3. UNION LIBRARIAN

There is news about librarians in unions EVERY DAY.

American Libraries covers a small amount, but there is no ongoing librarian publication that includes union news. I began to blog this news on a daily basis mixed in with general labor news. I am a member of a union and connected to the labor movement. I have been surprised at the amount of people who have written me with news and indicated that ALA or state library associations simply do not care about library union members.

If you plug the Words, “UNION LIBRARIAN” into google the blog, Union Librarian, as #1. It surprised me that there was such a gap in coverage of the 35% of all librarians who are members of unions.

I also try to keep current on unions in public and academic libraries with links to their websites.

==========

Here are the questions I was asked by American Libraries. The article included excerpts. My full responses are below.

1) What does it take for a blog to have an impact on the biblioblogosphere?

Write about something the mainstream media largely ignore like UNIONS or library connection to HUMAN RIGHTS and SOCIAL JUSTICE.

2_ What do the readers of your blog value about your posts (i.e., “voice” as an online columnist, value-added news coverage)?

Reader Comments have indicated to me an appreciation of identification of topics not covered by librarians’ print media—

UNION actions,

Actions that connect librarians and human rights and social justice to the larger Human Rights and Social Justice Communities.

Political issues.

These connections are an extension of my ideas –A LIBRARIAN at EVERY/THE KTICHEN TABLE—Librarians need to be involved in the larger struggles for equality and justice. The War in Iraq has been a great divide in this nation overlaid with the repressions of the USAPATRIOT ACT. While ALA Council may not have chosen to take a stand on ending the war (Seattle Council), many librarians feel strongly. They are my readers.

3) How do you decide when to post—inspiration, obligation to keep the blog fresh and readers engaged, or what?

Every day there is an issue I know the library press will ignore.

Today it is the demonstration of the New Mexico State University librarians for a contract [UNION LIBRARIAN];

yesterday it was the fact that librarians need to be more engaged with helping people with the EITC [A LIBRARIAN AT THE KITCHEN TABLE]

The day before it was a much read author, Stephen King, stating he wanted :

“To live to see George W. Bush tried for crimes against humanity.”

I put that Stephen King’s statement in my blog, LIBRARIAN, because it was powerful that a winner of the DISTINGUISHED CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN LETTERS AWARD would make that statement.

After reading the library press for over 2 decades I know what news will be ignored. I see items such every day. These are what I blog about.

4) How do you determine what the right length is for a given post?

Whatever it needs.

5) What has surprised you most about the process of blogging?

The different audience reached. I have gotten more feedback in the 5 years I have been blogging than in the 20 years I have been writing in the library press. Also, these are a different audience. The people who write about union issues are not, in the main, ALA members. So, blogging helps me find progressive librarians willing to fight for economic justice that I had not met before.

What lessons can libraries learn from your experiences as an individual blogger?

6) That the mainstream media/library press does not provide a reflective picture of how librarians feel on many issues… The mainstream library press is a mirror. Big libraries look at it and see themselves. Not in the mirror are union members, people against the war and people who would stand up to the likes of Judith Ring (Bush appointee as FL state librarian) who Jeb Bush ordered to close the state library and she went along..Yet not one member of the library press followed up on why she did this. You only read about it in the blogosphere.

7) What’s missing from the LIS blogosphere that you’d like to see someone take on?

Frontline voices. Anonymous blogs are paper tigers. While there are some sites that carp..they are not very effective because the writers are anonymous.

How will the blogs of today be regarded a decade from now? Should digital libraries collect them?

Like other alternative literature they move librarianship in new directions.

Posted in American Library Association, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, KdlPMcC, Librarian at Every Table, McCook Model, Social Responsibilities Round Table, community building, human rights, librarians, peace, progressive, publishing, social justice, unions | Comments Off

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Archive for the ‘McCook Model’ Category

Building Community in Brevard County, FL. No. 9.19.2009. 124.

A Decade of Community Building and Libraries. No. 8.1.2009. 106.

“McCook Model” for Community Building for Libraries. 1. 24.2009. 19.

“Previously offered by a formal library?” Philadelphia: Repurposing Libraries as ‘Knowledge Centers?’ No. 1.3. 2009. 2.

The Cultural Amenities Project. No. 1.10.2008.13.

“A Librarian at the Kitchen Table” Explained. No. 3.5. 2007. 43.

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