LSC535
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This GSLIS Continuing Professional Development Program also serves as a weekly session of Public Library Youth Services (LSC 535). For members of the class, some additional background on the role of collaboration and community alliances in youth services. 

Alliances: Notes from Gale

Community alliances, as well as broader partnerships, are widely advocated by library leaders. Some of you participated in Cerise Oberman's October 2000 workshop on building alliances to promote information literacy. If you are a member of PLA, you have received the January/February 2001 special issue of Public Libraries, devoted to the library role in building sustainable communities. ("A sustainable community is healthy, prosperous, and fair over the long term," writes Sarah Long in her introduction to the issue; and this necessitates attention to the 3 Es, ecology, economy, and equity. Through the alliance Kathy has just told you about, the Newport Public Library is making a measurable contribution to equity.) And a recurrent theme in your discussion of grants has been that applications are stronger when made by partnerships. 

Why form alliances with other institutions & organizations in your community? Probably not to save staff time or library money – although that’s been suggested. Maybe not to build sustainable communities, argues Abe Anhang ("Don't libraries have enough to deal with as computers and the Internet invade some of the territory that was traditionally, exclusively, theirs?"). More plausible suggestions:

• To increase the impact of the library and other agencies;
• To enrich services or offer otherwise impossible services;
• To advocate effectively for youth.

White (1997), explaining why collaboration is needed, resorts to that famous rhetorical device, the list of impressive statistics:

• Children and their families are more varied and diverse than ever before, and the way in which we serve them must, in turn, be flexible and varied.
• The number of children with special needs has grown, and we cannot assume that traditional library service meets the needs of these children and their families.
• Too many children (approximately one in four) are living in poverty.
• We often find ourselves "preaching to the choir." We reach few among those who need us the most because they rarely come to us. To reach that audience we must go beyond our walls to where they can be found. (p. 216)

Melody Allen (1995) discusses networking and cooperation in a broad context: networking with your library school classmates and at conferences, for instance; and making the most of state and regional systems like the RI Office of Library and Information Services (OLIS) or the Western Massachusetts Regional Library System (WMRLS), as well as cooperating with local agencies. But what she says about cooperating with community agencies is especially useful.

First, she relates it to planning and role setting: "if the library has determined that a primary role is the Preschoolers Door to Learning, then much of the cooperation undertaken will be in conjunction with agencies serving preschoolers—nursery schools, Head Start programs, day care centers, and home day care providers...." (p. 149)

Compare this to the Newport Families First emphasis on strategic planning. Their February 2001 report on the status of active grants concludes with a definition (strategic planning is a process for creating an organization's preferred future) and a list of things it helps organizations do: think and act strategically, develop effective strategies, clarify future directions, establish priorities, create a blueprint for action, and improve organizational performance. All this entails not only planning but communicating, monitoring, and evaluating. It's a time-consuming process.

The same planning you do with the help of PLA's Planning for Results, however, will plug into grant proposals and into the creation of formal partnerships.

Allen goes on to note the importance of creating formal structures: if cooperation is based on purely personal relationships, it is less likely to outlast staff changes than if it’s based on institutional policies. In this, Allen differs from Dengel (1998), whose advice for "Partnering" is dynamic and intensely personal; but note that one of the obstacles to partnering that Dengel identifies is "staff changes."

Allen lists four levels of cooperation:

• Liaison occurs when one party has a representative who is responsible for maintaining communication with the other party
• Coordination occurs when one party has a goal and another party can assist in accomplishing that goal
• Collaboration occurs when each party has a goal with some degree of overlap which leads to planning and together conducting a common activity
• Partnership occurs when both parties share a goal and contribute and benefit on a more or less equal basis

This brings us back to that question on the community inventory: Is there a council of youth-serving organizations in your community, and if not, would the library consider spearheading one? The answer to this was almost always no; librarians already had their hands full. But could the real answer depend on whether there are organizations in your community that share your goals and can contribute to a partnership?

Since you are participating in the general discussion on LSCCPD@pete.uri.edu this week, I will not pose more questions here to get you started -- but I look forward to your posing questions of your own that will get other people started. 

Bibliography

Allen, Melody Lloyd. (1995). Networking and cooperation. In Kathleen Staerkel, Mary Fellows, and Sue McCleaf Nespeca, Youth services librarians as managers: A how-to guide from budgeting to personnel. Chicago: ALA, pp. 149-162.

Anhang, Abe. (2001). Whatever happened to the chicken who crossed the road? Public Libraries 40, 1 (January/February): 12.

Benne, Mae. (1991). Principles of children’s services in public libraries. Chicago: ALA.

Dengel, Donna J. (1998). Partnering: Building community relationships. Journal of Youth Services 11, 2: 153-160.

Dickman, Floyd C. (1995). The why and how of planning. In Kathleen Staerkel, Mary Fellows, and Sue McCleaf Nespeca, Youth services librarians as managers: A how-to guide from budgeting to personnel. Chicago: ALA, pp. 1-10.

Himmel, Ethel, and William James Wilson. (1998). Planning for Results: A Public Library Transformation Process: The Guidebook. Chicago: ALA.

Long, Sarah. (2001). Introduction to this special issue. Public Libraries 40, 1 (January/February): 10.

White, Barb. (1997). Connections: Building coalitions to serve our youngest patrons. Journal of Youth Services 10, 2: 215-218.