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How can librarians converse with peers—colleagues and community members—to draw forth learning? Librarians need to implement the ability to listen and take one another seriously, but then respect each opinion.

Skills that librarians can nurture in themselves and others to not only converse with peers, but to excel with customer service:

• Respect sets the tone of how we treat each other internally within the organization and externally as we deliver services and programs. It is a mental skill to be able to understand and appreciate others. Management respects library staff, and vice versa. Peers respect each other. We respect teens to learn.
• Flexibility can break through limitations and expand our skills to a higher degree of competence. The library is flexible or poised and ready to learn how to make useful and helpful contributions to our community.
• Approachability flourishes when we listen and respond effectively. It is a keynote to promote learning as one of the most human things to do.
• Common sense is the practical mental ability to recognize, judge, and understand. It promotes intelligent decision-making.
• Discernment supports awareness, discovery, and creativity. We discern or observe life without bias to recognize and understand its meaning.
• Determination provides an inner source of power to help us remain steadfast in the face of obstacles. Even when we are discouraged and ready to quit, we seek to acquire better insights and apply them in helpful ways.

Discovery is the key to making room for the “new.” If you approach the improvement of library service using an inspired view of what might be possible, you are more likely to grasp the needs of the community as a whole. Libraries that thrive are geared toward asking how to help the community in order to build up all elements, so that—as the saying goes—all boats rise.

For example, one library reported stark contrasts among families about the perception of service when asked “Where do you go for support or advice when you have questions about using technology with your child?”

Two storytime presenters offered similar literacy-rich programs at the same library branch, one on Tuesday morning and one on Friday morning. Both storytimes were promoted as interactive parent-child programs with traditional research-based early literacy components such as books, songs, fingerplays, and puppets. However, the Friday morning presenter seamlessly integrated a tech or digital-media piece into each program. The tech bit might have been in the form of demonstrating a new app, or using an e-book to tell a story, or sharing an emerging technology such as augmented reality coloring sheets.

The result? The families in Tuesday’s storytime did not indicate the library as a place to find support or advice about using technology with their children, whereas the families in Friday’s storytime with a regular tech component saw the library as a go-to resource for their technology questions to be answered.

This insight was discovered because the library took time to observe families and hear their perspectives.

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Excerpt adaptation from pages 14 - 18 of Activate Peer Learning In Your Library and Community by Dorothy Stoltz with Elaine Czarnecki, Betsy Diamant-Cohen, and Carrie Sanders (Idlewylde, Maryland: Waldo Publishers © Copyright 2023 by Dorothy Stoltz. All Rights Reserved.)

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