College of DuPage - People Watching: Meeting Needs Before They Need It

College of DuPage

People Watching With a Purpose: Meeting Needs Before They Need It

How many times have you planned and prepared a program or service based on what you thought was a “community need?” And how many of these didn’t quite work out like you thought? Libraries—public, school, and academic—are re-visioning their roles in communities, moving beyond the rapidly outdated paradigm of creating services for patrons and students and instead partnering with community members in building meaningful experiences: whether those happen within the library’s walls, on a digital network, or in cultural and political spaces. Taking an “asset-based,” grassroots view, librarians and library educators advocate using a “community informatics” model toward library services, where significant—even delightful—engagement can happen. In this program, we discuss this paradigm shift, why it’s so necessary, and what it “looks like” in the real world.