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Prof researches the changing space of the urban public library 

Submitted on Saturday, December 19, 2020
Photo of Toronto Reference Library by Bilal Karim on Unsplash

Photo of Toronto Reference Library by Bilal Karim on Unsplash

By Suzanne Bowness

With a professional background that took her from working librarian to strategic advisor for the Southern Ontario Library Service, Associate Professor Siobhan Stevenson both knows and loves libraries. Given her experience in the practical and strategic challenges of librarianship, it’s not surprising that her long-term research focuses on the changing labour conditions in libraries.

Her most recent project, titled “A public library for the 2020s: librarians, social workers and the inclusive city” was awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Council (SSHRC) Insight Development grant in February 2020. Over two years, Stevenson will explore the role that libraries are now playing in large urban centres, especially when it comes to marginalized populations such as the homeless, or precariously housed.

“These populations are starting to use libraries more and more, because so many other venues that might have once been available to them are closed, the result of over thirty years of austerity in public spending,” explains Stevenson, adding that that the library’s changing role as an institution creates new challenges for staff, to the point where some libraries are even hiring social workers.

Associate Professor Siobhan Stevenson

Siobhan Stevenson says libraries will experience a kind of Renaissance if they take advantage of this moment.

To explore this human element, Stevenson will interview frontline library workers, social workers, senior management at libraries, and hopes to conduct focus groups with users of the shelter system. She will also partner with researchers from the faculty of Social Work. “We hope to explore what resources individuals use, and what their experiences are there,” she says.

Stevenson says that the immediate springboard for this research was the Working Together project, a federally-funded program that ran from 2004 to 2008 in four Canadian cities to experiment with using community development techniques in libraries. She further focused on the changing nature of work in large urban libraries in her previous SSHRC-funded project.

At a macro level, Stevenson says that the need for this research stems from the multiple ways that the library is changing. The physical space has taken on a new role as community hub, and even the monopoly that librarians once had as keepers of information had been disrupted by the internet and other crowd-sharing of information. With the library’s role changing so quickly and drastically, taking the time to assess and envision the future of the library and librarian is imperative. Perhaps nobody is more aware of that need than someone serving on the front lines herself during another period of radical change—Stevenson was a librarian during the 1990s when the rush to move every library online regardless of readiness led to some dissonance.

Despite recognizing the churn that libraries face at this time, Stevenson adds that she’s still cheerful about her beloved institution. “I don’t think the public library is going to disappear. But it’s unclear who’s going to be working in it, and what they’re going to be doing, what is needed from professional librarians,” she says. “But the time is right to fix them, and libraries will experience a kind of Renaissance if they take advantage of this moment.” Even more exciting are possibilities for librarians to take the lead around new challenges, such as fake news or sourcing diverse materials in conjunction with the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion movement.

Stevenson adds that her current students fuel her optimism about the next generation of librarianship, especially those in her public libraries course and her community asset-mapping workshop. “Almost everyone is here because they have some kind of a social conscience. My students are so committed to doing socially valuable work, this notion of public good. They really want to participate in social change.”