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By 2030, one in six people in the world will be aged 60 years or over. As the average age of population increases, governments are increasingly called upon to implement policies to address the needs and interests of older people, including those related to housing, employment, health care, social protection, and other forms of intergenerational solidarity. Public libraries, as trusted community hubs, have the opportunity to serve as an environment for reflection and dialogue on age and aging. In this chapter, the authors reflect on the broader contexts and social trends that are shaping older adults’ engagement with public libraries and identify those older adults-focused public library practices that align with specific UN Sustainable Development Goals: Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being, Goal 4: Quality Education, Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, Goal 10: Reduce Inequalities, and Goal 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions. While public libraries are already meeting many facets of UN Sustainable Development Goals, to ensure that libraries can responsively meet older adults’ changing needs and expectations, the authors conclude with suggestions to enhance public libraries’ cross-sector coordination for maximum reach and impact on older patrons’ everyday lives.

This reflective chapter examines recent trends in social work–public library partnerships. The chapter begins by framing interprofessional collaboration between social work and public libraries as a vehicle for the collective impact that can create lasting and sustainable change in communities. Next in the chapter is an overview of the current state of public libraries’ capacity to support individuals in crisis through community partnerships. Next is a description on how interprofessional collaboration can support public libraries in general and the importance of collaboration with social work more specifically. A presentation of the existing models of public library–social work partnerships and their impact on the role of public libraries in their communities follows, with a discussion of the services provided by public libraries, and how partnerships might change the nature of social work practice. Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion of the barriers and challenges to these partnerships with an eye toward the future of such partnerships and developing their capacity to enhance the health and wellbeing of their patrons, and the safety and resilience of their cities and communities.

This chapter presents a preliminary model that frames public library workers as the foundations of how public libraries help build and support sustainable communities in the twenty-first century, particularly in the United States, specifically in rural America. For public libraries to continue to be key partners in sustaining their communities, and in supporting the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is essential that public library work be valued, visible, and sustained over time. The UN defines sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Four studies of public library work during the COVID-19 pandemic found that public library workers are facing challenges in both meeting their own needs and meeting the needs of their communities. That finding led to a consideration of what is needed to place public library work at the center of sustainable thinking. Sustaining library workers will strengthen the library as a community hub, and help those workers in turn sustain community relationships necessary for the work of the library. These, in turn, will contribute to more sustainable communities.

This chapter presents a gap analysis of the perspectives of small businesses and rural librarians in Tennessee in order to develop an implementation blueprint of a public library small business toolkit, a resource that the state’s rural public libraries can create for small businesses in the future.

The chapter reports on select comparison data sets collected via two exploratory online surveys with small businesses and rural public librarians, respectively, in an externally funded planning grant awarded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ National Leadership Grants for Libraries (Research category) to the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee.

Findings from the gap analysis of the perspectives of small businesses and rural librarians provide similarities and differences between the two stakeholder groups in terms of

• existing assistance needs of small businesses,

• information-related challenges small businesses experience,

• desired public library use, and

• information-related components of a public library small business toolkit.

existing assistance needs of small businesses,

information-related challenges small businesses experience,

desired public library use, and

information-related components of a public library small business toolkit.

The study is a unique example of action research based on varied levels of participation in rural research and action, learning through collaboration, community inquiry into everyday experiences and potential impact, use of mixed methods, and the situated nature of applications and concrete outcomes. It serves as a pilot case experience and prototype assessment test bed to expand strategies for the entire Appalachian region and other rural environments in the future.

Public libraries are incubators for collective action in the knowledge economy. As three case studies from the United States and Singapore demonstrate, public libraries can serve as influential champions that garner financial resources, communicate an urgent need for change, and respond to the unmet information and economic needs of marginalized individuals and communities. In the Raise Up Radio (RUR) case, public librarians engaged schools, museums, youth, and families in rural communities to develop and deliver STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) content over local radio stations. In collaboration with organizational partners, RUR librarians created a model for library-community-radio projects for the rural United States. In the What Health Looks Like (WHLL) case, public librarians engaged senior citizens in discussions of health and the creation of health comics. In partnership with an interdisciplinary health research team, WHLL librarians developed a pilot for library-community-public health projects aimed at information dissemination and health narrative generation. In the Singapore shopping mall libraries case, the National Library Board (NLB) created public libraries in commercial spaces serving working families, senior citizens, and the Chinese community. The NLB developed an exportable model for locating information centers in convenient, popular, and useful business spaces. These case studies demonstrate how libraries are nodes in the knowledge economy, providing vital services such as preservation of cultural heritage, technology education, community outreach, information access, and services to working families, small- and medium-size businesses, and other patrons. In the years to come, public libraries will be called upon to respond to shifting social norms, inequitable opportunities, emergencies and disasters, and information asymmetries. As the cases of RUR, WHLL, and the shopping mall libraries show, public librarians have the vision and capacities to serve as influential champions for collective action to solve complex problems and foster sustainable development and equitable participation in the knowledge economy.

Innovation is proven to be an essential element of every organisation that wants to achieve survival and sustain its presence. Libraries as information organisations are transformed into innovation incubators because of the fluid information environment, the social and economic influences and their desire to advance the public good. The Greek public libraries of Nafpaktos, Levadia and Veria are known examples of libraries that have successfully embraced change and innovation. This research aims to identify, through a content analysis of these specific public libraries’ websites, the innovative services they offer to the community.

It was found that the chosen public libraries offer a wide range of innovative services (e.g. Media Lab, Information Centres). No matter the challenges the Greek public libraries are facing, they have developed the necessary internal mechanisms to change the difficulties into opportunities and chance for excellence.

While public libraries are well-established as a place to borrow books and use reference materials, they are less recognized for the services and programs they offer to their local communities. These programs and services often directly or indirectly impact the health of patrons and the larger community.

While some public libraries offer programs that address patron health in collaboration with other health professionals, such as those at local universities, public health departments, and other health-related organizations, these collaborations are often informal, offered for an indefinite period of time, and rely on finite funding. While public health professionals and organizations are often overlooked in public library collaborations, they are a natural fit for collaboration.

As public libraries serve the needs of vital and often vulnerable members of our communities, it is important to build sustainable community partnerships when offering programs and services that impact patron health. This will not only identify organizations committed to improving the health of these populations and those that provide reliable resources; it will also streamline information and provide consistent information to identify safe and reliable resources on social media, the internet, and in the community.

This chapter serves as a reflective narrative which explores how public libraries and community organizations can collaborate, identifies anticipated challenges, and describes considerations and strategies for addressing these challenges. The ultimate goal is to identify how libraries can expand the depth and breadth of both library services and public health organizations to sustainably improve the health of the local community.

What does the intersection of food gardening and public librarianship look like? This chapter examines the question through a close analysis of three case studies that represent the spread of this phenomenon in the United States and Canada. This is a first step toward identifying areas for further research that will contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of how food gardening in and around public libraries addresses community-level health disparities. Although it is the case that food gardens and related programming are no strangers to public libraries, this topic has not received sustained attention in the LIS research literature. Public libraries have long been framed as key institutions in increasing consumer health literacy, but a more recent trend has seen them also framed as key institutions in promoting public and community health, particularly through the use of the public library space. This chapter examines food gardens at public libraries with this more expansive understanding of how public libraries address health disparities, by considering how this work occurs through novel partnerships and programs focused on transforming physical space in local communities. At the same time, public interest in food gardens parallels increased awareness of food in society; food and diet as key aspects of health; food justice activism; and a long history of community empowerment in the face of the proliferation of food deserts through myriad activities, including community food gardens. The authors consider how food gardening in public libraries parallels these trends.

This exploratory study, a Ph.D. dissertation completed at the University of Western Ontario in 2013, examines the materially embedded relations of power between library users and staff in public libraries and how building design regulates spatial behavior according to organizational objectives. It considers three public library buildings as organization spaces (Dale & Burrell, 2008) and determines the extent to which their spatial organizations reproduce the relations of power between the library and its public that originated with the modern public library building type ca. 1900. Adopting a multicase study design, I conducted site visits to three, purposefully selected public library buildings of similar size but various ages. Site visits included: blueprint analysis; organizational document analysis; in-depth, semi-structured interviews with library users and library staff; cognitive mapping exercises; observations; and photography.

Despite newer approaches to designing public library buildings, the use of newer information technologies, and the emergence of newer paradigms of library service delivery (e.g., the user-centered model), findings strongly suggest that the library as an organization still relies on many of the same socio-spatial models of control as it did one century ago when public library design first became standardized. The three public libraries examined show spatial organizations that were designed primarily with the librarian, library materials, and library operations in mind far more than the library user or the user’s many needs. This not only calls into question the public library’s progressiveness over the last century but also hints at its ability to survive in the new century.

Historically, library usage has increased during economic downturns. In the pre-Internet era, this meant increased usage of print materials and reference services. In the Internet era, however, the number of roles that public libraries can play in serving their communities has expanded greatly. This chapter provides insights into the ways in which American public libraries are using the Internet to meet patron, community, and government needs in this time of economic crisis. Drawing from the data and findings from the 2010–2011 Public Library Funding and Technology Access national survey, this chapter examines key issues at the intersection of public libraries, the Internet, and economic uncertainty and library/e-government partnerships that have resulted from the economic situation. In these difficult economic circumstances, US public libraries have been able to use the Internet to meet many vital patron and community needs, but they still face numerous economic difficulties in responding to these requests.