Community Led Public Libraries

A community led public library is a model of service planning that embraces the community informing the library staff rather than the library staff doing all the traditional research and study and then developing a model to serve the community. According to the Webjunction webinar "Putting the Public Back in Public Libraries" held in 2011

A community-led library, 1) listens to the community talk about their needs 2) collaboratively develops, with the community, the services and programs to meet those needs, and 3) gathers community input on the collaborative activity, then modifies as needed.

While it sounds like the traditional model it is structured differently and has a much more integrated involvement with the community. At its core it embraces the opportunity to create opportunities to play together.

From WebJunction post: http://www.webjunction.org/news/webjunction/Community_Led_Public_Libraries.html

In 2008 Libraries in Communities project published a comprehensive tool available at http://www.librariesincommunities.ca/resources/Community-Led_Libraries_Toolkit.pdf