Halifax Public Library Winner of OLA’s President’s Award for Exceptional Achievement

Halifax Public Library was one of the winners of the OLA’s President Award for Exceptional Achievement awarded at the Ontario Library Association super conference 2009. This award acknowledges an outstanding action or contribution that has in a major or unique way enhanced or furthered librarianship in Ontario.

Halifax was a partner of The Working Together Project, which was conceived by Brian Campbell and Paul Whitney of Vancouver Public Library and involved three partner libraries—Halifax Public Libraries, Toronto Public Library, and Regina Public Library. The Working Together Project, funded by Human Resources and Social Development Canada, explored how to apply community development techniques in order to develop more inclusive public library services.

The project sought to achieve two main objectives:

1. Through establishing ongoing relationships with socially excluded people, work collaboratively with socially excluded communities to articulate and respond to their library service wants and needs.

2. Identify and examine systemic barriers to library use for socially excluded people and propose policy and procedural change to address these barriers, including the development of an inclusive service planning model.

In order to achieve these objectives, Project staff worked in four urban neighbourhoods with populations who have been alienated from or who do not feel welcome in the public library. Using community development techniques, staff have been working to both understand the barriers faced by community members and to collaborate with them to eliminate barriers and plan relevant services that meet their self-articulated needs.

The project has provided six key lessons:

• Library culture, along with rules and procedures, create significant barriers to inclusion.
• Libraries must recognise that same or consistent customer service, which does not take into account socio-economic disparity, results in inequitable services that further disadvantage socially excluded people.
• Planning relevant and effective library services for socially excluded community members requires a collaboration of equals between the community members and the library.
• Relationship building is at the core of effective service planning.
• Staff “soft skills” such as empathy, interpersonal competence, and open-mindedness are essential.
• People want to see themselves represented in the library and to have an opportunity to participate.

Their work has been amazing and it has culminated in an important publication, a copy of which was sent to every public library in Canada: The Community-Led Libraries Toolkit, is also available in pdf at www.librariesincommunities.ca.

The Toolkit provides philosophical and practical guidance for all stages of the library service planning process, from developing an understanding of community and needs identification through library policy development, service planning, day-to-day customer service, staff development, and evaluation. In addition to being a valuable resource for managers and librarians working with socially excluded communities, the Toolkit content should also be useful for any staff seeking to develop community-led practices, regardless of the social or socio-economic group they most directly serve.

From left to right: Heather Davis, Toronto Public Library; Tracey Jones, Halifax Public Library; Annette DeFaveri, Vancouver Public Library and National Coordinator of the Working Together Project; André Gagnon, Regina Public Library; Sandra Singh, National Director of the Working Together Project; Brian Campbell, Retired, Vancouver Public Library and Founding Director and former National Director of the Working Together Project; Sam Coughlan, OLA President.

Photo courtesy: Brian Pudden, OLA.