Community Connections with Annie Norman

Here is the recording of a really great webinar about the ways that Delaware public libraries are connecting to their communities.  The whole webinar isn't edge-of-your-seat-exciting, but it has some very cool moments that are worth the hour of your time to check out.

High-points for me:
1. DE is using the OCLC "Geek" campaign to focus attention on libraries.  The question is, what do you geek?  For instance, I geek reading romance novels and I geek gardening.

DE is collecting all of the things/ideas/areas that community members are excited about and taking it a step further by classifying those 'geeks' into Dewey Classification.

In the below image, you'll see that they are classifying their circ info, Overdrive circulation, reference questions and what do you geek, into Dewey.  They now have a visual guide of where to put programming energy, collection development and training.

 

The other super cool part of their community connection strategy has been to have community meetings to talk about what dreams community members have for themselves, their families, their communities and the state.  At each of these community meetings, a visual artist documents the ideas that are generated.  This is awesome...

The image combines the "what do you geek" question with the ideas generated from the facilitated, "what are your hopes and dreams" discussions.  DE also did What do you Geek billboard at three spots in the state.

I love this campaign as a way of inspiring library staff and the community, using Dewey to promote collections, plan programming around engagement, speak to hopes and dreams and place libraries at the center of the community.

Last favorite bit -- DE will be adding "ice-breakers at every program" to their Best Practices for Programing toolkit.  Making connections and engaging the community is one of the best things that we can do as libraries (I think).  Simple things like, everyone say hello to the person beside you and talk about what you are reading or listening to right now.

Cool stuff!  How can we adapt or adopt these ideas?