St. Cloud Minnesota Downtown
Libraries are an important part of a community. Whether they serve the broader public or a specific niche, libraries provide an important source of information and help develop a sense of community.
When entering a new area learning about the community can help provide a librarian with the necessary understanding to serve individual patrons.
In almost every class at the iSchool, the importance of learning about the users and the community is emphasized. It is difficult if not impossible to serve a community without understanding it. This lesson was never more apparent than in LIS 512, Community Analysis.
While doing a simple walk around a local downtown, I discovered that it was possible to gain insight into community patterns while observing the community in action.In addition to observation, we learned to search for and analyze already existing community documents. Between the two methods it is possible to begin to understand a community. It is important to observe an area multiple times and to understand the methodology used in existing studies.
However, nothing helps as much as interacting. By interacting with various community members in the interactive fiction community I discovered that some major developers felt they were not part of the community at all, despite the appearance of being part of the community. After completing my final project, an analysis of the interactive fiction community, I discovered aspects to the community that I had missed, including that some people did meet at events in person, not just online. The lesson I learned was the importance of going back. I had continued interacting with the community after the project’s end. Mistakes are going to happen and changing my analysis based on new information is important. I cannot become so entrenched in what I first find that I ignore new information.
In coming to a new community I would look for opportunities to volunteer. Working with people to improve a community offers opportunities for learning about that community that observation and conversation do not. The ability to work with more people allows for learning about a wider part of the community. This enables me to see many different aspects of the community beyond where I might normally interact.
It is my belief that serving a community is what librarianship is about. The better I know the community the better I can be a librarian.
I grew up in a tiny town in the Midwest. I have lived in small cities, small towns, rural areas, and now a large metro area. While the communities in each of these areas is vastly different, there is always a library that helps bring people together. While these communities often center around children, there is also always a thriving adult community. It is this group I would most like to serve. Observing and participating within the community to find its needs and then helping to create ways to serve them is something I look forward to doing in my professional career.