Building collaborations within the community is beneficial to your library and to your customers. But what is the best way to build these relationships? Should we all just run out and partner with every organization we can find? Well, no, of course not.
Consider whether the relationship will further your library’s mission and meet your library’s core values. Yes to both of those? Great! Is the collaboration mutually beneficial? Yes? Move forward! Now, think about how much it will cost you in time, energy and money. This sounds doable too? Then go for it, collaborate! But don’t be afraid to re-evaluate all of these points and break off the relationship if it doesn’t work out for either organization. Be flexible, be courageous and be thoughtful and you will have a successful collaboration.
There are many great resources that will take you through the collaboration building process step by step, here are a few:
- Collaboration: What Makes It Work by Paul W. Mattessich, Marta Murray-Close and Barbara R. Monsey (Amherst H. Wilder Foundation)
- Collaboration Handbook: Creating, Sustaining and Enjoying the Journey by Michael Winer and Karen Ray (Amherst H. Wilder Foundation)
- The Nimble Collaboration: Fine-tuning Your Collaboration for Lasting Success by Karen Ray (Amherst H. Wilder Foundation)
To read about real library collaborations check out Librarians as Community Partners: An Outreach Handbook edited by Carol Smallwood ( ALA Editions).
This information was taken from a presentation made by Lettie Haver of the Paul Clarke NonProfit Resource Center at the ILF District 3 conference.