A Year with Project Compass

The PNLA/WLA 2010 conference in picturesque Victoria BC provided my first opportunity to give a retrospective report on Project Compass, the year-long, IMLS-funded program to work with State Libraries and focus on building public library capacity to meets the needs of a workforce in crisis. After a whirlwind year, I could start to take a few steps back and look at what we (the big WE of state and public libraries all over the country) have accomplished in response to the economic downturn and the dramatic increases in demand for library services.

My slide presentation describes the scope, goals and phases of the overall project, and then focuses on the past, ongoing and future actions of the states represented at the Pacific Northwest conference—Idaho, Montana and Washington. To get the full-throated understanding of all the amazing work that State Libraries are doing, browse the list of Showcases presented by participants at the Project Compass summits. Nobody is resting on their laurels either, as evidenced by the list of projects that are being implemented in the coming year.

The most rewarding aspect of the year with Project Compass has been engaging in a vibrant knowledge exchange with the library community, not just with participants at the in-person and online summits, but with library people everywhere. From those who attended my conference session, I got to hear perspectives from the front lines and from rural libraries about what was needed to serve job-seekers. I hadn’t heard before about the need for wifi printers so users could print directly from their laptops and not have to queue up for the public computers. Or the need for space in small libraries; job-seeking can be an all-day effort and the job-seekers impact the tiny spaces of many rural libraries.

For ongoing connections, there is the community of practice for Workforce Resources on WebJunction. This section burgeoned since the start of the project. It is truly a community effort with lots of room for continued growth. If you’re on Twitter, use the #libs4jobs hashtag to broadcast news and events about the library-workforce connections. If you’re not a tweeter, you can still see freshly updated posts in the Twitter badge on the main section page.

Stay tuned for Year Two. Project Compass continues to augment public library services to the unemployed with a follow-on grant from IMLS.