Community Exploded

Think you know what a community is? Take a look at the various definitions of "community" that we can access on the web ("What's My Community?," p. 15). Is community like good art, where we think, "I'll know it when I see it"? Libraries have long served many communities in many sectors. This is our context. We may exist on the premise that we improve the quality of questions, organize the world's recorded knowledge and culture, and deliver the right content experiences for our users. Basically, we live in the context of our users.

We need to understand, and understand deeply, the communities we serve. We need to empathize with the goals, psychological needs, and competency levels in each of the communities that we serve. My colleagues and I spend a great deal of time trying to understand how our products, services, and software are being employed and in what context. We need to focus on the true needs of the end user as well as the context of the service professional, the library worker. This has led us to think deeply about "context" and how many there may be.

We, and our users, also look at the opportunities provided by the variety of old and new technologies that relate to or enhance community development and interactions. These technologies, which surely extend beyond the following, include discussion lists, virtual classrooms, virtual reference, bulletin boards, kiosks, wireless technologies, expertise database and knowledge management (KM) tools, social networking software, instant messaging (IM) and email, and intranets.

All of these can comprise the technological components of context management solutions. I believe that there must be a simple framework we can use to design strategies and plans that will serve our organizations and society—in context. I propose that there are only five types of communities that matter to libraries. My "high-five" communities include neighborhood, workplace, entertainment, learning, and research.

These five types of communities can apply to both human users and information-hungry sectors—like academic, college, or public libraries; not-for-profit or for-profit enterprises; associations; and others. Each library user, or potential user, obviously doesn't fit neatly into just one community. We all shift fluidly among them: doing research, performing our jobs, finding enjoyment in leisure activities, learning a little along the way, living in our neighborhoods with our friends and families. The difference is that in certain contexts one community rises in strategic importance.

At first glance, this feels like the public library niche. However, in today's world neighborhoods can be bounded by their interests instead of geography. They can be local, regional, or global.

Communities of interest are neighborhoods of people of like mind and focus. Sometimes those interests can be expressed locally but still find their niche on a broader scale. Think of the genealogical research revolution, knitters sharing patterns, or even Trekkies. People build neighbors through their interactions with their local institutions. Libraries can add to users' networks of neighbors and empower these communities with information and a sense of place. Libraries can provide decent and coordinated access to the resources of the whole community—and not just at the library.

Simply getting the job done creates communities. We create organizations because most work is too complex to be accomplished alone. We connect through contiguous offices and communication via telephone and email and in meetings small enough to surround the water cooler or big enough to require meeting rooms or auditoriums.

Recently, we have extended these workplace communities through conferencing software, email, IM, etc. Lastly, there are new professionally oriented communities that have moved beyond annual conferences and scholarly publications and developed professional communities of practice. Intranets in most businesses also provide environments for workplace sharing. We see a trend to expand these through the addition of interactivity and collaboration tools. Libraries can play a key role in these communities when we align our magic with their ecologies.

Most libraries serve some entertainment function. Public libraries have always filled entertainment needs with recreational reading collections, nonfiction collections such as those aimed at celebrity fans, music aficionados, hobbyists, some genealogists, and all those gardeners and cooks.

Many things that we define as entertainment are also indicators of our culture: music, plays, fiction, television, celebrity, performance, etc. When we look critically at the web we can see a plethora of fan and hobby sites addressing the need for entertainment and cultural activities.

People come together in communities to learn together and teach one another. We identify forums for this as classes, schools, courses, degrees, programs, certificates, and other forms of continuous learning.

Libraries struggle with how to provide information and research support for the new blended learning environments. Learning is no longer restricted primarily to in-person classrooms and training seminars but comprises an amazing range of e-learning options.

Our library-oriented initiatives now focus on the Learning Commons and Information Commons to serve both physical and virtual learning spaces. As we plan strategically for the future, we must focus on ensuring the relevance of libraries in a world where learners expect learning and learning support at any place geographically, synchronously and asynchronously. This will challenge libraries deeply in the coming decade.

Research communities fall into three main groups: personal, commercial, and academic. Few libraries are purely research and few libraries don't have a research component.

It's a mistake not to recognize research explicitly as a key community in its own right. For starters, researchers generally self-identify their attachment to their community—be they historians, medical researchers, etc. Basically, if you believe you're in a community and others agree, then it is likely you are. What has changed in recent years has been the ease with which research communities have found those of like mind. It is amazing to view the explosion of new research communities as people find others who want to read, discuss, share, and view research results and opinions.

Libraries support the research community. What has changed is the emergence of interdisciplinary research, the speed at which some disciplines are discovering new things without benefit of the scholarly publishing process (cloning, DNA studies, robotics, bionics, human genome work, etc.). Exciting, but it presents challenges for our profession.

These five groups of communities have one thing at their core: they all have a connection among people. No amount of technology, communication, and fiat can create a community from whole cloth. Some human relationships need to exist first. And they can all be improved and empowered with the intelligent application of technological solutions. The traditional models will continue to be useful and relevant, but a new model of community development is emerging, with its own challenges.

We must ensure that we provide the right balance of community tactics in our grand strategic plans. Do these five main frames for discussing community ring true, or are there others that don't fit neatly into this model? Let me know. I'd love to continue this discussion with you.