The Town and Country Public Library in Illinois has a similar event for both kids and teens. Children vote for their favorite cookie, and teens vote for their favorite pizza. “The library gave out samples of the cookie and pizza that won these junior elections,” reports Roving Reference Librarian Dwayne Nelson.

While no advance registration was needed for these kid-friendly events, millions of adults find out too late that they missed a deadline to register or update their information before Election Day. Some proactive libraries are promoting National Voter Registration Day with programs and displays. The holiday celebrating democracy occurs the fourth Tuesday of September each year.

Madison Public Library in Wisconsin partnered with Local Voices Network prior to their last mayoral election to collect information about concerns of citizens. The program utilized digital hearths to record over 60 discussions and convey perspectives of diverse community members to candidates, policymakers and the media.

Central Rappahannock Regional Library in Virginia conducted a “Speed Repping“ event in which “state assembly candidates were invited to speak with the public in a speed-dating style setting,” according to Tracy McPeck, Adult Services Coordinator. The event was in partnership with League of Women Voters Fredericksburg Area (LWVFA) and other local groups. They also partnered with LWVFA on ‘Civic Lab: Dear Elected Official’, which McPeck describes as “informal lobby tables that engage passersby in discussions on where to vote and how to contact their legislators.”

Many libraries create LibGuides for voters, such as Be A Voter, developed by Reference Librarian Haley Samuelson and colleague Nate Gass of Cook Memorial Public Library District in Illinois: “Our goal was to create a one stop shop for the entire voting process. We are located in a deep purple district and have been pleased that patrons of all political stripes have found the resource useful and neutral,” Samuelson reports.

Young voters tend to be least likely to turn out on Election Day. Matt Imrie creates an interactive display to raise awareness. “I have a display in my teen area encouraging young people to register and have a rotating display of books, a weekly countdown, and a random political term with what it means written in plain English,” explains the Youth Information Specialist for the Gardner Branch of the Johnson County Library in Kansas.

Public libraries often serve vulnerable members of the community, including survivors of domestic violence, whose barriers to voting may include privacy concerns. Miranda Dube, who maintains the Librarians for Survivors website, explains how to help: “Libraries can make sure they provide information on how voting records are public as many survivors may be unaware of the risk of registering to vote. Make sure information about local Address Confidentiality Programs (ACPs) are available.” ACP and Confidential Voter Listings are state-administered programs that enable survivors of domestic violence to vote using a substitute address. The National Network to end Domestic Violence maintains a state-by-state list of such programs.

Lack of a permanent address can be a voting obstacle for people experiencing homelessness. You Don’t Need a Home to Vote toolkit, produced by the National Coalition to End Homelessness, includes tips and a chart of state voter regulations. Nonprofit Votes helps nonprofits engage members in voting and elections, including a starter kit and checklist for remaining nonpartisan.

Wondering who won the kids’ vote at the City of Fairfax Regional Library? Let’s just say the kids didn’t agree with the Electoral College results in 2016, but aligned with adult voting results for the county. And in the local election, Marvel Superheroes beat DC Comics’ team by just 12 votes- proving that every vote counts!

The post Election Year at the Library first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Public Libraries Can Help Citizens Get Out and Vote
As Election Day draws near, of course, public libraries want to encourage civic participation. The ALA makes it easy for public libraries with their toolkit, Smart Voting Starts@your Library.³ The kit helps libraries:

• develop campaigns to promote voter registration and to increase civic participation in elections;
• access to websites about the legislative process, voting and government;
• Great Ideas—direct links and contact information to public library systems around the U.S. who have already established programs;
• Sample Questions for Candidate Forums and Templates for Letters to Government Officials;
• Bibliographic resources, videos and CD-Roms; and
• Registration with Project Vote Smart (ww.vote-smart.org) which entitles registrants to receive a free resource book, website guide, a reporter’s source book and a toll-free service that puts each library in touch with a researcher.

Library Civic Engagement Is A Year Round Commitment
Long after Election Day, communities share library spaces to study, to socialize, to get online, to get job training, and more. There are many different ways that public libraries engage communities in civic discourse with each other. A 2016 Pew Research Center Study on Attitudes Toward Libraries found that communities increasingly found public libraries “safe place[s] to spend time, to pursue educational opportunities, or a place where creative juices flow.” The study found no generation gap when it came to libraries: 81% of millennials and 77% of baby boomers found the public library a place to find “information that [was] trustworthy and reliable.”⁴

Public Libraries Celebrate the Democratic Ideal
The educator and philosopher, John Dewey, understood that our “democracy [was] more than a form of government; it [was] primarily a mode of associated living, …a communicated experience.”⁵Our public libraries certainly celebrate that democratic ideal.

The Role of Digital Access in Civic Outreach
Jessamyn West has observed that digital access expanded the library’s role in civic outreach far beyond its traditional parameters. “[Civic outreach] is more than just about voter registration.  It expands to include taking care of our world, each other, and ourselves so that we can be good community members.” ⁶ West discovered a Ham radio operators club (boxboro.org) at her local library which proved invaluable when other infrastructure networks went down. That club led her to free online training for Skywarn Spotter Training—www.skywarn.org.⁷

Communities know that their public libraries offer tax help and lend books but when disasters strike, and unfortunately, they often have, public libraries have offered desperately-needed information resources, access to digital services, help lines, and charging and heating stations.The New Jersey State Library system offers a Disaster Preparedness Tool Kit.  In turn, The National Council for Behavioral Health has a nationwide Mental Health First Aid program which provides professional training for organizations on how to address mental health related crises.⁸

Civic Outreach Through Community Engagement
Public libraries around the nation offer innovative and creative ways to engage with their communities.  Whether it is the Montgomery County Public Library in Rockville, Maryland which developed the REAL Program along with the Jewish Council for the Aging to offer library services at county Health and Human Services or Idaho’s Boundary County Library District, America’s Best Small Library 2017, which repurposed its community space and upgraded its tech needs with a FAB lab.⁹At the end of renovations, nearly half of the 11,869 people in the county had library cards.¹⁰

Public Library’s Challenge:  Support & Educate a Better Informed Citizen
Each experience that a citizen has in a library space equates to an opportunity for democratic engagement and the public library’s challenge to support a better informed citizenry. Public librarians may discount the importance of their interactions with the public. If former House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s, principle, “all politics is local” is true, then all library interaction is civics. It almost seems too simple to define democracy as a friendly face, a computer space, or a toddler reading circle. Democracy leans upon a two-prong support–civic participation and popular suffrage. Dewey concluded that a “democratically constituted society” included two traits—points of shared common interest and a freer interaction between social groups. If that’s where democracy begins, then what better place to engage than at the public library, whether to register to vote or to attend your local birding club.

Finally, vanden Heuvel poses the question, Want to defend democracy?  Her answer, Start with your public library. “If your library is under threat, it’s worth defending.” Public libraries—where democracy “upholds the virtues of equality and community”—and where civic engagement is alive and well throughout the year.

References

1. Klinenberg, Eric. “Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. New York, New York. Penguin Random House. 2018.

2. Vanden Heuvel, K. (2018, September 18). Want to defend democracy? Start with your public library.Retrieved September 20, 2018, from www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/want-to-defend.

3. “Smart Voting Starts at Your Library”, American Library Association, January 4, 2013.http://www.ala.org/aboutala/governance/officers/past/kranich/smart (Accessed September 23, 2018)

4. Horrigan, J. (2016, September 09). Americans’ attitudes toward public libraries. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/09/americans-attitudes-toward-public-libraries/

5. Dewey, J. (n.d.). The Democratic Conception in Education. Retrieved September 23, 2018, from http://www.johndeweyphilosophy.com/books/democracy_and_education/The_Democratic_Conception_in_Education.html

6. West, J. (2017, November). Practical Technology: Civic Outreach. Retrieved September 23, 2018, from http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/nov17/index.shtml

7. Ibid

8. Ibid

9. Montgomery County Public Libraries Earns National Innovation Award From Urban Libraries Council for ‘Real Change’. (2018). States News Service.

10 Berry, J. N., III. (2017, September 15). A Culture of Opportunity. Library Journal, 18-21.11 Vanden Heuvel, K. (2018, September 18). Want to defend democracy? Start with your public library.Retrieved September 20, 2018, from www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/want-to-defend.

11. Vanden Heuvel, ibid.

The post Public Libraries Celebrate the Democratic Ideal first appeared on Public Libraries Online.