Community-Led Librarianship Demands an Asset-Based Community Development Approach

Stevenson, Siobhan

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/108812 Copy

Description

Title

Community-Led Librarianship Demands an Asset-Based Community Development Approach

Author(s)

Stevenson, Siobhan

Issue Date

2020-10-13

Keyword(s)

Asset-based community development

Abstract

For the public librarian, archivist, or curator, asset-based community development (ABCD) is many things: a professional practice, a research method, a partnership-building vehicle, and an important tool with which to support the development of healthy, vibrant and sustainable communities. ABCD is the opposite of, but complement to, needs assessment studies. In the latter, emphasis is placed on what’s lacking in a community, its deficits, what it needs; rather than what it already has, its assets. ABCD is premised upon the belief that all communities contain a wealth of resources: in the people who live there, in their associations, clubs and institutions, as well as the businesses they run and frequent. This paper introduces the value of a recently offered graduate course in ABCD for students with interests in the new community-led librarianship. It is also a course, that I hope, contributes to contemporary conversations about a re-envisioned LIS curriculum, and responds to the pressures I have experienced firsthand in both the community and in the classroom. The phrase “our interconnected world” is interpreted here as that world beyond the four walls of the library and into which public librarians find themselves embedded in unfamiliar territory. These are communities at a far remove from the status quo. At the heart of this work is a commitment to social justice through community development that places communities, their members, and their assets at the centre, and the library professional on the sidelines in a capacity-building role and as a useful source of bridging social capital.

Series/Report Name or Number

• LIS Education
• Curriculum
• Research Methods
• Pedagogy
• Community Engagement
• Community-led Services
• Public Libraries
• Social Justice
• Specific Populations

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/108812

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