Subject area: Environmental scan and surveys in identifying public library community needs

Format: Video lessons 2 & 4

Length: 1 hour

Audience: Public library professionals at all levels

Organiser: edX (the University of Michigan)

Presenter: Kristin Fontichiaro

 

Reflection:

The objective of undertaking a section of this course was to gain practical tools and strategies for the process of identifying community needs, namely conducting environmental scan for potential partner organizations in the delivering of programs and designing surveys to find unmet needs and underserved user populations. These skills are core components of working in a public library and building the knowledge base, awareness, and tools to engage with the diverse groups, individuals, and organizations in the community.

I studied a chart of several categories to help public libraries identify community organization’s, society’s and groups that they may enter into partnerships with or collaborate on shared goals targeting a various demographic groups. Examples include community development efforts such as partnering with organization’s to help people find employment, working with social workers to provide social and economic opportunities for marginalized community members, or health associations to meet the needs of a group living with a particular health condition. For the category of arts and culture, this can include partnering with museums, musical or literary clubs, and thinking across the cultural and socioeconomic spectrum such as collaborating with mosques, or adult daycare groups for adults with down syndrome or memory loss.  A practical exercise in sorting and analyzing this list includes using sticky notes to write down a comprehensive list of community partners with key information on them such as who they serve and what costs are associated with their activities. This can enable a way to assess what existing relationships the library has with community organizations, what community groups are being missed or underserved, identifying what activities incur high costs and whether your library can replicate them for free, what services are being duplicated unnecessarily and where are the gaps in what is being offered to the community as a whole.

Surveys are an important tool of requesting information directly from your communities. Essential considerations in conducting a survey include whether the library is prepared to act on any feedback received by survey respondents, consider the length of the survey, ensure questions are varied, demographic data requested is meaningful and asking questions that locate strengths of the library as well as points of frustration. Furthermore, a strategic survey design includes asking open questions earlier on in the survey and avoiding leading questions to obtain authentic answers.

These practical strategies that can be readily applied to workplaces and are essential for me to begin cultivating and thinking about in order to map out the methods, approaches and tools that public libraries employ in understanding their communities and eliciting meaningful input.