The School of Information’s Civic Librarian Project seeks to build on the tradition of library professionals as community problem-solvers by helping public librarians use 21st-century technology to address civic challenges.
“We think of solving civic problems through information as an extension of what librarians have always done, which is to serve the lives of their patrons,” said Cliff Lampe, professor and associate dean for academic affairs at UMSI, who co-founded the project with Scott TenBrink, a lecturer III in information.
Civic problems take many forms. They might include improving safety for bicyclists and drivers sharing the road, preventing clogged drains in cities with aging infrastructure, or helping commuters navigate traffic disruptions caused by construction.
These problems — whether dire or day-to-day — shape the well-being of a community.
Funded by a $384,133 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Civic Librarian Project is an open-access, six-module course designed to help librarians create resident-centered solutions and partner effectively with local governments.
Each module features video lessons by Lampe and TenBrink, case studies from Michigan communities, and activities that invite librarians to apply what they’ve learned to challenges in their own communities.
Lampe and TenBrink’s goal was to introduce the principles of civic technology to the library profession. Civic tech includes tools and services meant to inform and engage citizens or improve government services. Examples are SeeClickFix — a website and app that allow residents to report non-emergency issues to their local government — or the Ann Arbor snow plow tracking map that displays plow locations.
For civic technologies to serve the needs of a community, they need to be developed based on community input — an area in which library professionals excel. They are skilled in data collection and information management, and many are deeply embedded in their communities.
“Libraries are trusted community institutions and thought of as neutral conveners,” TenBrink said, adding that these are superpowers librarians can leverage, especially in facilitating public conversations and forging partnerships with their local governments.
How to make an idea real
More than a decade ago, when he was an associate professor aiming to create civic engagement opportunities for UMSI students, Lampe recognized a potential pitfall: “How could the school provide opportunities for community engagement in a way that wasn’t extractive of a community, that was productive for both parties, that really helped people?”
The answer came in the form of a project-based course, Citizen Interaction Design, launched in 2013. CID allows UMSI students to partner with Michigan communities to identify a civic problem, then create an information tool or service to help solve it.
With a background in urban planning and experience collaborating with government and nonprofit organizations, TenBrink came to UMSI as community manager for the program. Over the years, CID has expanded to include co-curricular programs and has worked with a dozen Michigan communities on more than 150 civic tech projects.
This Civic Librarian Project takes this process, developed at UMSI over more than a decade, and makes it available to library professionals across the state and nation. The case studies in each module come directly from UMSI student projects.
In one case study, UMSI students collaborated with the Capital Area District Library and Lansing city government to foster better engagement with public records: nearly a century’s worth of bound volumes that had recently been digitized.
“To take something that’s lived in a vault for 20 years, that’s only accessible to engineers, and to sort of shift that into the mindset of the more general user — that’s something we can do in the library,” said Heidi Butler, local history specialist for the Capital Area District Library.
The students’ challenge was not just to make Lansing citizens aware of the resource, but to help citizens see how it could be relevant to their lives. They took inspiration from Pokémon GO, creating a prototype for a gamified app called “Lens-ing” that invites users to explore the city of Lansing through its public records.
The project generated excitement from Lansing’s community development manager, Erin Buitendorp, as a way to engage younger residents and foster deeper ties to the city. “I think that’s going to help us from a local government standpoint,” Buitendorp said.
State Librarian of Michigan Randy Riley, who served on the project’s advisory board, said he believes this is the future of the profession.
“Librarians and libraries already play a huge role in their communities,” Riley said. “Encouraging local governments to see public libraries as potential partners and collaborators is a no-brainer. The Civic Librarian Project helps provide today’s librarians with the tools needed to better connect with their communities in meaningful ways.”
