Community Resilience and the Role of the Public Library

Communities face increasing threats from disasters precipitated by climate change, biodiversity loss, and energy and food insecurity. In the face of such threats, communities must adopt strategies that build resilience. The library has a role to play in such strategies. This study explores how, through an examination of day-to-day working practices, public libraries promote and inhibit community resilience. The methodology used combined autoethnography and situational analysis. A reflective journal was kept documenting experience across a period of four months. Situational analysis was used to elucidate the data content. Several areas of interest emerged: the existence of a split between the social worlds of the library worker and user, the role of technology in this split, the role of professionalism as discourse in rationalizing the use of certain technologies, the role of management in perpetuating this discourse, the place of outreach in bridging the gap between these social worlds, and the environment as an abiding concern. Each of these areas provides a potential site for new policies and practices and for further research regarding the role of the public library in building community resilience. Introduction This article explores the role of the public library and issues of climate change, energy and food security, and biodiversity loss inspired by Slone’s (2008) “After Oil,” which examines how the public library will remain, and even increase in importance as society moves toward a post-oil society. One movement currently addressing these issues at a community level is the Transition Movement (Hopkins, 2008). This grassroots movement is engaged in developing “energy descent plans,” mapping paths beyond societies’ dependence on oil and working in villages, towns, and cities LIBRARY TRENDS, Vol. 61, No. 3, 2013 (“Research Into Practice,” edited by Sheila Corrall and Barbara Sen), pp. 513–541. © 2013 The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois 514 library trends/winter 2013 through projects targeting returns for effort, such as food production and reducing energy requirements of households and businesses (Hopkins, 2008, 2010). The concept of resilience is central to the Transition Movement in tackling these issues (Hopkins, 2008; Pinkerton & Hopkins, 2009). Norris, Stevens, Pffefferbaum, Wyche, and Pffefferbaum (2008, p. 127) define resilience as “a process linking a network of adaptive capacities (resources with dynamic attributes) to adaptation after a disturbance or adversity.” These adaptive capacities provide a strategy for disaster readiness (Norris et al., 2008). Resilience is therefore a strategic concern for any community wishing to meet the challenges posed by climate change, energy and food security, and biodiversity loss and potential related disasters. Examples of such scenarios might be the economic collapse of Greece or social disorder in British cities during 2011. If resilience is a useful concept for communities in these contexts, it is therefore a concern for public libraries, whose role is to serve the community. This study seeks to understand how public libraries promote and inhibit community resilience through an examination of day-to-day working practices. Data were collected using an autoethnographic method in the form of a detailed reflective diary of experiences in the workplace that were subjected to data analysis using situational analysis. The analytical process identified elements that inhibit community resilience in the context of public libraries. This enabled the identification of factors that facilitate the promotion of community resilience leading to recommendations for action and policy in the workplace and further research. Literature Review There is no literature directly concerned with public libraries promoting community resilience. This necessitates a study of broader areas: (1) community resilience and its connection to climate change, biodiversity loss, and energy and food security, and (2) the role of the public library with regard to sustainability, sustainability literacy, and ecoliteracy. Examining these broader areas enables us to explore the link between public libraries and community resilience, contextualizing this study. The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007) identified the need for societal adaptation to the effects of climate change, linking concerns over climate change with biodiversity loss and with energy and food security. Resilience, as a concept, has many definitions, but most “emphasize a capacity for successful adaptation in the face of disturbance, stress, or adversity” (Norris et al., 2008, p. 129). Obrist, Pfeiffer, and Henley (2010, p. 287) discuss “layers of resilience” at different levels across society from individual, through community, to national and supranational. Changes at one level have the potential to affect another, so changes to structures and institutions, such 515 community resilience/grace & sen as libraries, have the potential to change individuals’ capacity to adapt. Community Resilience The ability of societies to adapt to potentially disruptive change is at the heart of community resilience (Dubbeling, Campbell, Hoekstra & Veenhuizen, 2009; Hopkins, 2010; Innes & Booher, 2010; Maguire & Cartwright, 2008; Newman, Beatley, & Boyer, 2009; Norris et al., 2008; Tidball & Krasny, 2007). Norris et al. (2008, p. 130) delineate four sets of “adaptive capacities”: economic development, social capital, information and communication, and community competence. Innes and Booher (2010, p. 206) emphasize the uncertainty in predicting the future and the need to shift “from debate of alternative solutions to working together with our diverse knowledges to craft adaptive strategies that can help us move in a desired direction.” This process-orientated view is echoed in Hopkins’s (2010) Transition Movement promoting community resilience through adaptive or transformational resilience, arguing that change offers potential to rethink assumptions and build new systems.