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Abstract: Piecing It All Together: Community Partnerships and the Public Library
Public libraries provide a multifaceted tapestry of services, programs, and collections that seek to support and contribute to an informed citizenry. The threads of this tapestry work to represent individual stories and experiences that can be woven together to form a community-based whole with the library as the needle. Previous scholarship has explored quilts and quilting as methodology (Koelsch, 2012; Saukko, 2000), metaphor (Delueze & Guattari, 1987; Flannery, 2011), and art subject (Mainardi et al., 1973). To understand the quilt as object is to recognize its Appalachian origin in thrift, constructed often from pieces of other, older cloths no longer useful as clothing or cleaning rags and often encasing older, more threadbare layers beneath newer, stronger ones that preserve the pieced heritage within (Blue Heritage, n.d.).
Research Design
A recent study conducted by [removed for blind review] has pieced together rich data drawn from a variety of sources to understand this tapestry, in terms of the challenges, opportunities, and future trends it embodies. These data threads included: virtual and in-person focus group interviews with public library leaders and staff; a survey with [removed for blind review] members; a literature review of public library literature (scholarly and trade); and the input of an advisory board, composed of library leaders representing communities that vary in size, demographics, and geographical regions, and public library researchers.
For our analysis of the study’s data to construct this community partnership life cycle, we are combining a two-sided theoretical framework: one side uses quilting as methodology (Koelsch, 2012) to understand the ways in which these data threads form convergent and divergent seams of meaning; the other side employs Bakhtin’s heteroglossia (1981; Smith, 2004) to investigate how the information shared through dialogue in the current research hearkens back to and expands upon the scholarship previously conducted to draw forward the threads of meaning from the past.
Preliminary results
Our initial thematic analysis of this multi-stranded data has already uncovered discrete stages of development, sustainability, and evaluation that, when combined, form a life cycle of community partnerships between the public library and various organizations that seek to support and meet the needs, priorities, and aspirations of today’s communities. However, the data also shows that the nature, purpose, and role of public library community partnerships are neither simple nor straightforward and therefore require a complete understanding of these stages to investigate and determine the effectiveness of the partnership in the short- and long-term for both parties as well as how to navigate inevitable fluctuations and adaptations to the partnership.
Research Design
A recent study conducted by [removed for blind review] has pieced together rich data drawn from a variety of sources to understand this tapestry, in terms of the challenges, opportunities, and future trends it embodies. These data threads included: virtual and in-person focus group interviews with public library leaders and staff; a survey with [removed for blind review] members; a literature review of public library literature (scholarly and trade); and the input of an advisory board, composed of library leaders representing communities that vary in size, demographics, and geographical regions, and public library researchers.
For our analysis of the study’s data to construct this community partnership life cycle, we are combining a two-sided theoretical framework: one side uses quilting as methodology (Koelsch, 2012) to understand the ways in which these data threads form convergent and divergent seams of meaning; the other side employs Bakhtin’s heteroglossia (1981; Smith, 2004) to investigate how the information shared through dialogue in the current research hearkens back to and expands upon the scholarship previously conducted to draw forward the threads of meaning from the past.
Preliminary results
Our initial thematic analysis of this multi-stranded data has already uncovered discrete stages of development, sustainability, and evaluation that, when combined, form a life cycle of community partnerships between the public library and various organizations that seek to support and meet the needs, priorities, and aspirations of today’s communities. However, the data also shows that the nature, purpose, and role of public library community partnerships are neither simple nor straightforward and therefore require a complete understanding of these stages to investigate and determine the effectiveness of the partnership in the short- and long-term for both parties as well as how to navigate inevitable fluctuations and adaptations to the partnership.