CURRENT POSITION Community Engagement and Partnerships Manager, Howard County Library System, MD DEGREE MA, Public Affairs, Princeton University, 2012 FAST FACT DiSalvo-Thronson’s husband says she has a daily requirement for Vitamin P: People time. FOLLOW linkedin.com/in/katie-disalvo-thronson-44456572; chapterchats.org/2022/04/06/national-library-week-reach-out Photo courtesy of Howard County Library System

Community Connector

Howard County Library System’s (HCLS) Christie Lassen summed up Katie DiSalvo-Thronson in her nomination: “Her passion for and commitment to equity is the foundation of her work.” 

When she began working at HCLS in 2019, DiSalvo-Thronson reached out to community advocates to learn about their goals and what the library could do to help. One of her primary goals was to help people understand what the library could do for them. “I want to live in a world with more community,” she says. “The library is a great tool for advancing that. Connecting to community is really imperative for helping as many people as possible use those resources.” 

Among her projects is building a portal for students and families in need with information about finding food, housing and rental assistance, unemployment, and mental health resources. Knowing that many students didn’t have access to the internet, she worked to produce a print version included with free lunches distributed by the schools. 

Equity initiatives have included setting up meetings between the school’s Black and Hispanic Student Achievement Liaisons, Title 1 staff, and library staff for conversations and relationship building. She manages the Brave Voices, Brave Choices program, created to collect stories of racial injustice and examine how to understand those stories and how to take action. More than 600 have been collected so far, and demand for training is high. 

When the pandemic arrived, DiSalvo-Thronson facilitated helping a member of the library’s Racial Equity Alliance set up food distribution sites, and to date more than 2 million pounds of food have been distributed, most in library parking lots. She also worked on an online community memorial for lives lost during the pandemic and provided ribbons for people to write notes on and tie to trees outside the library.  

DiSalvo-Thronson says libraries should reach out to the community and not wait for users to come in. “Even people who are familiar with library services, it’s sometimes hard to communicate, and hard for them to grasp the full range of possibilities we offer,” she says. “Every time we go out, we find people who are surprised by either the basic premise, or the excellence they can get for free. We have to keep on telling people who we are and what we do and how much we want to connect with them.”