New Report From The Aspen Institute and Colorado State Library: “Libraries: Building Community Resilience in Colorado”

From an Aspen Institute Blog Post:

The Aspen Institute Dialogue on Public Libraries is pleased to announce the publication of Libraries: Building Community Resilience in Colorado.
This report is the result of a collaboration with the Colorado State Library. The report unveils a set of opportunities and recommendations for building public-private and public-public library partnerships statewide that include participation in new youth initiatives, workforce readiness, and libraries serving as civic hubs. The Aspen Institute Colorado Dialogue on Public Libraries is the third in a series of Aspen Institute dialogues across the country that are designed to spark new thinking and action to transform libraries for the 21st century.
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Libraries: Building Community Resilience in Colorado helps to define where public libraries fit on the state’s roadmap to resilience for Colorado communities. The report identifies ten opportunities for libraries and their communities to work more effectively together to enhance the drivers of and mitigate the challenges to community resiliency. These are:

1. Build into the resiliency of communities the knowledge that people change career paths all the time.
2. Look at education and lifelong learning as one interrelated ecosystem.
3. Adopt whole approaches to children and families for closing achievement and other gaps.
4. Develop partnerships for collective impact.
5. Connect libraries with the creative community.
6. Build networks with the private sector.
7. Create a new office to facilitate public-private and public-public partnerships.
8. Reclaim the salon culture in libraries.
9. Attract, inspire and enable diverse talent in the library and the community.
10. Change the culture and policies that inhibit innovation.

Read the Complete Blog Post/Intro
Direct to Full Text Report
40 pages; PDF.
See Also: Colorado Dialogue on Public Libraries Website

The Aspen Institute Colorado Dialogue on Public Libraries roundtable took place at the History Colorado Center on May 25th in Denver, Colorado. This video features a special session with keynote remarks by Governor John Hickenlooper.

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