Preparing the Next Generation of Librarians for Family and Community Engagement

Abstract

Many librarians work in public libraries to make a difference for children, families, and communities and identify family and community engagement as a cornerstone of their responsibilities. For librarians to be successful they must be afforded strong foundations in family and community engagement that begin early in their preparation. Yet little is known about the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that librarians need to engage families and communities, and these topics are rarely covered in schools of information and library sciences. The purposes of this exploratory paper are to identify the competencies that librarians need to engage families and communities and to understand promising pedagogical methods for promoting them. Interviews were conducted with 11 library educators at leading schools of information and library sciences within the United States to understand their perspectives on the topics. Results reveal three main goals for the preparation of librarians for family and community engagement: (1) to provide librarians with knowledge of families and communities, (2) to promote relationship-building skills, and (3) to encourage the mindset that librarians are professionals. Experiential and connected learning opportunities are the most promising methods for achieving these outcomes. Findings are discussed in terms of four main recommendations for stronger integration of family and community engagement into existing curriculum.