“It was a great experience to have and one to learn from. It’s bittersweet to be ending!” – Camrin Sullivan, Lakeview Community Library, Random Lake, WI (Cohort 2)
By Ellen Brooks
At the end of 2022, we shared a blog post reporting on some of the outcomes from the IMLS Accelerating Promising Practices Community Memory project. Now, over six months later, we are both proud and sad to report that WiLS’ role in this work is officially over. Working with the cohorts and with the WiLS team has been such a significant part of my professional life for the past three years and I wanted to share some highlights and takeaways from the project, as well as some final reflections from some of our cohort members.
“From the interactions with the cohort members, mentors, and presenters who we heard from throughout the grant project, we’ve gained ideas and inspiration for potential future projects to further enhance local access to and development of community memory collections.” – Emily Chameides, Hudson Area Library, Hudson, New York (Cohort 1)
The highlight of this project for me was the opportunity to meet and work with colleagues who are passionate about libraries, community memory, and collaboration. This goes hand-in-hand with the satisfaction of assisting others in expanding their networks and connecting with colleagues across the country who have expertise or experience from which we could all learn. Building and sustaining professional relationships is vital to our work. Not only do we find guidance and support from our colleagues, but our communities also benefit from these relationships because they help us grow as professionals, and we can bring confidence and new ideas to the people we work with and for. The “community” in community memory is not just the communities we serve; it’s also the communities we build.
Extra exciting was the opportunity to do site visits with two of our cohort members. This June, Kristen Whitson and I visited the Lakeview Community Library in Random Lake, WI, to check out their newly created Memory Lab for their “Random Memories” project in person. In August, I visited Belfast, ME, to attend the celebratory wrap event for the All Belfast Climate Dialogues project.
“The IMLS APP grant was an excellent way for us to position the Pella Public Library at the forefront of digital history in Pella… the IMLS APP grant and the cohort-based experience were what were finally brought this long-standing idea to life.” – Chris Brown, Pella Public Library, Pella, Iowa (Cohort 1)
IMLS designed the Accelerating Promising Practices opportunity to strengthen small and rural libraries that do not often have or receive the funds or attention that larger organizations get. Libraries and communities with fewer resources can often get left behind. This experience proved what many of us already knew: the people working in small libraries are full of passion, knowledge, and good ideas; it is a matter of making more opportunities available to them and supporting them as they build on their existing capabilities. As Chris related in the quote above, most library staff and the communities they serve have any number of project and program ideas they would love to make a reality. It’s important that IMLS, WiLS, and everyone else in the library sphere remain committed to making the playing field more even and creating more opportunities for small and rural communities.
Part of WiLS’ role was to help the libraries sustain their community memory efforts beyond the grant period, both by prompting the libraries to think about the future of their projects and by providing resources that would be useful beyond the life of the grant. To meet this need, we turned many of the tools and resources we provided the cohorts into tip sheets and guides, gathered here for easy reference.
“I feel like it was an opportunity to stretch my skills in new directions and I appreciate that.” – Janet Evans, Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, Philadelphia, PA (Cohort 2)
It was clear at the start of this project that the cohort members and the mentor team at WiLS were embarking on something new to all of us. The cohort model and the mentorship role were both something that came baked into the IMLS APP grant, but a lot of work had to go into figuring out exactly what those facets of the project looked like and how they could work best for everyone. I think I can speak for everyone involved when I say we all learned a lot and developed new skills that we will gratefully take into our next projects. And I’m glad to report that we made some friends and had some fun along the way!
