Book Reviews

Ask, Listen, Empower: Grounding Your Library Work in Community Engagement. Mary Davis Fournier and Sarah Ostman, eds. Chicago, IL: ALA Editions, 2020. 176p. Paperback, $44.99 (ISBN: 978-0-8389-4740-1).

In Ask, Listen, Empower: Grounding Your Library Work in Community Engagement, editors Mary Davis Fournier and Sarah Ostman provide an effective guidebook for libraries seeking to develop a “community engagement librarian” position and expand or reimagine their approach to community programming. The book provides both theoretical foundations and practical steps for implementing an intentional and socially conscious community engagement practice.

The editors—both members of the American Library Association’s Public Programs Office—begin by outlining why this book needed to be written:

Some in the library field remain dubious about the need for a new understanding of the phrase [community engagement]. Ask a career librarian and that person may reason that the library is, by definition, engaged with its community; for a library to exist, it must provide something that the individuals in its community use and want and need. Some library workers marvel at new job titles like ‘community engagement librarian’ and wonder, ‘Isn’t that what we’ve been doing all along?’ (xxiii)

The anthology of 12 contributed essays proceeds to answer the question posed, explaining the difference between community engagement as a discrete concept and the sorts of positive community relations that a library should always already pursue. While library practice is often concerned with playing a positive role in community members’ lives, sustaining and nurturing the formation of healthy social bonds and promoting information literacy and knowledge creation, community engagement is a discrete concept that denotes giving community members a more active voice in determining what those library processes look like. The book aims to expand the breadth and diversity of community members who come to the programming planning table. It is also focuses on magnifying the depth, substance, and power of library-community relationships once they are formed.

Several essays in the collection reference and interpret the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) “Spectrum of Public Participation” schematic. This schematic identifies a continuum of five possible levels of layperson involvement in institutional decision-making. At the lowest level, “inform,” the layperson is a passive recipient of information from the institution. The institution makes programmatic choices, and the layperson consumes the notifications and announcements that the institution makes. At the next level, “consult,” the institution invites the layperson to share feedback and other opinions about the decisions the institution has made. Decision-making power still rests squarely in the hands of the institution at this level, but the layperson plays a role in contributing their voice to potential revisions and edits of the programmatic decisions.

At the next level, “involve,” the institution receives the layperson’s feedback during the decision-making process rather than after the fact. The institution gives the layperson opportunities to voice concerns and other feedback during the creative process and to thereby influence the outcome of programmatic planning. With “collaborate,” the institution takes the sentiments of the “involve” stage and amplifies them to the maximum level. The layperson receives a more substantial seat at the table and plays an active role in determining the outcomes of every stage of the programmatic planning process. This “collaborate” level is the second-highest level of layperson participation in the IAP2 continuum. The highest level of participation is “empower.” Here, the layperson has full final decision-making power. The institution’s function, when the IAP2 continuum logic reaches its final conclusion, is literally to “ask, listen, and empower,” as the book’s title indicates. The institution must learn what the layperson wants and make it an institutional priority to translate those desires into results.

Although only two of the book’s 10 essays directly mention the IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation—essay #1 by Nancy Kranich and essay #7 by Ellen Knutson and Quanetta Batts—this schematic stands out as a choice motif by which to understand the whole anthology. Every essay in the collection empowers the reader with either a theoretical framework or practical behavioral advice for increasing the extent of public participation at their library.

Different readers will come to this book with different levels of confidence and experience in the social skills and design processes necessary to put community engagement programming into action. There’s something for everyone in this book, from those who are chomping at the bit to produce results at the “empower” level of engagement to those who are just starting to realize—or still need convincing—that their institution only performs at the “inform” level of layperson participation.

Some essays in the collection give historical and theoretical context, explaining why community engagement is necessary for the proper functioning of libraries within a democracy and for the fulfillment of the ALA Core Values of Librarianship. Other essays give practical case study examples of libraries around the country whose community engagement efforts are a model for others. Still other essays speak directly to the reader, offering practical guidance on how to speak to community members, practice the emotional intelligence necessary to manage the relationship, and how to follow through on the promise to give these community members a greater say in how the library runs and what the library is used for. The collection includes advice not just for the planning and implementation stages of community involvement but also for the task of assessment and determining whether community outreach efforts are having their desired effect.

In this well-written, conversational handbook, editors Fournier and Ostman deliver on their promise to “examine the context, implications, and applications of community engagement today” (xv). Written primarily with a public library audience in mind, the volume has much to contribute to academic libraries interested in working more closely with their communities both on and off campus.—Alasdair Ekpenyong, Syracuse University