Yolande Wilburn, the Evanston Public Library’s new government director, informed library trustees, one query got here up repeatedly in conversations with patrons, surveys, and so forth. Members of the Library’s Racial Equity Task Force, in a variety of their brainstorming, grappled with the problem too, she mentioned.
“People kept saying ‘What our are values?’” she mentioned.
“And they [those same people] actually told us what our values were,” she rapidly added, “they usually have been proper: inclusivity and belonging.
“And that was a word – ‘belonging’ – that kept coming up over and over again.”
The time period emerged as one of many key values within the 2024-26 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging Plan that Wilburn introduced to the Library Board on Wednesday.
One of the plan’s key options is creating an setting the place all residents really feel represented and welcome inside library house.
2018 DeEtta Jones report a ‘foundation’ doc
Library officers started transferring in that course in 2018, contracting with DeEtta Jones and Associates to conduct an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Needs Assessment.
The library’s Racial Equity Task Force was created the identical 12 months and includes library employees and neighborhood members.
As a results of the DeEtta Jones findings, the library issued a press release in 2020, recognizing historic racism in Evanston and committing the library to social justice, one of many earliest if not the earliest of Evanston authorities our bodies to take action.
Staff EDI coaching, in the meantime, started in 2019 and continues yearly on an ongoing foundation, Wilburn famous in her presentation.
There have been some painful choices too. In 2020, Evanston Public Library trustees voted to shut two of its branches, the Chicago Avenue/Main Street location and the North Branch at 2026 Central St., declaring that future department areas can be based mostly on want and fairness.
Guiding values
Besides inclusivity and belonging, lifelong exploration, equitable entry, neighborhood wellbeing and sustainability are different elements of the new plan, mentioned Wilburn, who began within the government director’s job in November 2023 after a nationwide search by the board.
“Lifelong exploration is learning, right, as I always want to know more and I’m never too old to learn; there’s always something more that I can do and explore,” she defined.
“And then equitable access was a real key component,” she informed trustees. “There was a sense that came out in the data of the Jones report that the people who maybe the library should be serving are the people who use it the least.”
As for neighborhood wellbeing, folks maintain the library in excessive esteem.
“But they also felt very strongly that the library should really serve as a catalyst for change in the community,” she mentioned. “That that could really be a place where people can spark ideas and come together and have discussions that are healthy and productive about opinions that may be different than theirs.”
On sustainability, she informed trustees, neighborhood members are involved concerning the setting and the right way to be good stewards of it.
But there’s additionally “fiscal sustainability,” and concern that “resources should be allocated in ways that we need them to be allocated and that may not be the way that we have allocated them in the past.”
Beyond Black and white
The library has skilled a altering demographic for the reason that 2018 Jones report, which principally centered on the disparity in how the library was seen by the town’s white and Black communities. That report took notice of the rising Latinx presence within the faculties.
Since then, “Northwestern has brought a huge and thriving Asian community here, and we need to respect that,” Wilburn famous, “and then also with the number of migrants that we have coming in from other countries, our indigenous population, even though that is small.”
Other marginalized teams famous within the plan embody older adults, people with disabilities, the unhoused, weak youth and LGBTQIA+.
“We really need to honor that,” Wilburn mentioned of the range, “and make sure that we are the place that is inclusive.”
The plan lays out a technique to take action, beginning this 12 months, making a Board of Trustees-appointed Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Committee.
Other actions embody assessing the present assortment to establish gaps in illustration and variety; launching initiatives to take away obstacles to entry throughout the library amenities corresponding to bettering signage, updating constructing layouts and guaranteeing accessibility for people with disabilities; and implementing skilled coaching packages for library employees to extend consciousness and understanding of range and inclusion.
Wilburn: Staff trauma a part of the equation too
In that regard, Wilburn famous one other key’s addressing the truth that “library staffs really do face a lot of trauma every day. And I think as we develop the strategic plan it’s going to be really important that we bring in trauma-informed care into that holistic approach.”
The 2024 plan additionally contains issuing a complete advertising plan, highlighting important library sources via varied channels, corresponding to social media, e-mail newsletters, neighborhood occasions and native partnerships.
Getting the phrase out
Jenette Sturges, the library’s advertising and communications supervisor, gave a separate report about that division’s 2024 objectives at Wednesday’s assembly.
Currently, the library presents about 100 packages a month, Sturges informed trustees, “and marketing this many programs effectively is a real challenge given our limited capacity. And there’s nothing more heartbreaking to me than a really valuable program that doesn’t get the attendance that we’d like it to see.”
“[The] Maze of Medicare [one of the programs the library sponsors on a monthly basis] is not particularly sexy,” she mentioned, “but it is very important to people who attend it and it’s a hard one to reach people for. I really believe that, given enough time and resources, we could have 90% of our programs at full capacity, because there really is an interest in our community and an audience for them. It’s a matter of not having the capacity to reach out in a concerted effort that we think would really benefit.”
The library has stepped up its social media presence significantly since Sturges began within the place December 2021.
“The reality is with social media you can leverage other people’s goodwill,” noticed Board President Tracy Fulce, division chair and professor of enterprise at Oakton Community College, who added that social media can be used to leverage particular library packages.
A social media technique is essential in Evanston, Sturges mentioned. Facebook teams in Evanston are significantly giant.
Developing a sustainable, adaptable social media technique is one among her division’s main objectives on this 12 months’s work plan.
Trustees accepted the Strategic Communications Plan and the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Plan in separate unanimous votes.
