A Community’s Right to Knowledge
As the social role of libraries expands, Brooklyn Public Library (BPL), in partnership with the The New School’s Parsons DESIS Lab, explored ways to enhance their current services and to develop new strategies and services for the reentry population. Through the Transdisciplinary Design Studio, we - a group of graduate students from Parsons - were given the opportunity to join their partnership and explore potential design interventions that would offer BPL new opportunities reaching communities having had personal experience with the criminal justice system.
Role
Workshop Facilitator
Design Researcher
Co-Designer
Date
Fall 2018
Team
Alyssa Kropp - David Baum - Heer Mehta - Isabella Gady - Paula Ishihara
Problem Statement
As libraries evolve to fulfill an expanded social role, the Brooklyn Public Library is examining how their branches can be inclusive of the unique needs of their patrons, including both incarcerated and re-entry citizens. For these populations the first experiences with the library are critical and can decide whether or not an individual continues to engage with the services and resources it provides.
Proposal
The library, while often defined by its physicality, consists of more than just its space. By expanding the scope of the library beyond the physical, and acknowledging that its greatest strength is its patrons, we are able to offer opportunities for redesign; novel designs that can address the community needs most relevant to each branch.
Workshop with the Brooklyn Public Library
We concluded our intensive phase of research with a participatory design workshop held at the Bedford branch in Brooklyn to which a broad set of stakeholders were invited, including patrons, BPL staff, civil society members and city government representative. My group focused on Perceptions of the Library and included a series of activities centered around the library floor plan, asking participants to add qualities of the library, icons representing items, activities, and library services. I served as the main facilitator for our group. Workshop participants included library staff, patrons, government workers, and post-incarcerations service providers.
How might we recognize each BPL’s patrons’ experience by making it more inviting for every community member, resulting in an increase in the uptake of services?
Concept and Artifacts
In order to ensure the first touchpoint by a patron with the Brooklyn Public Library is an empowering moment, we designed a Bill of Rights for BPL patrons. Based on BPL’s strategic development plan and what we heard from patrons during the workshop we developed a Bill of Rights with the following components:
Right to Information
Right to Equal Access
Right to Your Own Beliefs
Right to Community
Right to Support
Right to Fun
We created a traveling poster with bookmarks to be placed in the entryway of branches, as well as surrounding community spaces, to inform community residents of their rights in the library. The poster can also be used at community events the library attends. There are bookmarks for each right that contain examples of different services available at the library that fall within that right. The content of the poster is additionally translated into Spanish, Hebrew, Hindi, Chinese, French, and Portuguese.
Through our research, we also identified the computer area inside the library and the outside surrounding areas of the Bedford branch as two touch points to reach potential patrons that might benefit from the libraries outreach services but are currently unaware of them.
With this in mind, we developed a prototype consisting of:
A wireframe for a landing page proposing for the temporary redesign of the Home Site to highlight relevant local outreach services of the library. If someone clicks on one of the main buttons, they will be redirected to the respective section of the libraries main website.
A Wifi Pop-Up page: similar to the page described above, we are in the process of designing a pop-up page - popping up when someone logs on to the WIFI - that highlights the outreach services offered by the library hoping to reach those connecting to the free wifi in the surrounding areas increasing their awareness about the services offered by the library.
Prototyping and Testing
We brought the Bill of Rights to the Bedford Library branch to get some initial feedback from patrons and staff. Patrons and staff members that we had an opportunity to engage with affirmed the rights we had drafted and provided additional ideas for services the library could provide. This pointed to a future opportunity to incorporate a feedback mechanism into where the Bill of Rights is displayed within libraries.
We have met with the BPL development and marketing teams and are working closely with them to test the landing pages and pop-ups in January.