On July 16, Ithaka S+R released a new report, “Exploring Basic Needs Support Across Public and Community College Libraries,” as the first phase of its Maximizing Public-Academic Library Partnerships project. The report, authored by Senior Analyst Sindy Lopez, Analyst Sage Love, and Researcher Melissa Blankstein, surveys basic needs services promoted on public and community college library websites to see where that information differs, overlaps, and could potentially be expanded as partnerships.

“Both types of libraries play a crucial role in supporting the diverse needs of their communities, serving as hubs for education, information, and essential services,” the report’s introduction states. “Maximizing partnerships between public and community college libraries therefore presents a significant opportunity. As basic needs insecurity has only been exacerbated by the pandemic, and funds for both community college and public libraries continue to remain constrained, we see the potential for immense and immediate value in building collaborative partnerships between these institutions.”

The project is funded by ECMC Foundation—a national foundation focused on eliminating equity gaps in postsecondary completion by 2040—to examine how community college and public libraries share knowledge and collaborate to promote basic needs services and information. This first phase focuses on how these services are advertised on public and community college library websites, highlighting eight categories: technology, food security, housing security, physical health, mental health, financial literacy and assistance, transportation, and child services and care. An “other” category includes tailored resources and services that did not fit into the researchers’ definition of basic needs—which were drawn from the ECMC Foundation’s rubric—but that are targeted to specific populations, such as legal assistance, veterans’ services, DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and immigration services, social work, and others.

Researchers then set up a qualitative inventory of public and community college library websites to gather data on the basic needs resources and services they promote to patrons, drawing from ECMC Foundation information as well as staffing and organizational resource data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

The library sample consisted of 100 each of two-year, not-for-profit, associate degree-granting institutions and their corresponding municipal public library systems. Two community college libraries were ultimately excluded because their websites were not fully operational at the time, resulting in a final total sample size of 198 libraries.

Each type of institution brings its specific mission to meet community needs: Public libraries serve as community hubs with a range of services across all basic needs, with offerings that vary according to whether service areas are urban, suburban or rural, while community college libraries focus primarily on supporting student success and well-being. In both sectors, libraries with better financial and human resources were found to promote services to their patrons more widely.

But given these basic predictors, there are interesting differences and areas of overlap. Both public and community college libraries prioritize technology resources—92 percent and 81 percent, respectively—though of different kinds: public libraries lent out more Wi-Fi hotspots and provided more computer instruction, while community college libraries lent out more laptops, for example. Financial literacy and assistance, at 76 percent and 45 percent respectively, were the next most commonly promoted resources. Mental health information and programming are given priority in both library sectors, although more so in public libraries—65 percent to community college libraries’ 38 percent.

Children’s services ranked high overall, although these are disproportionately provided—by 96 percent of public libraries, versus 15 percent of community college libraries. However, the metric is important despite the disparities.

“A lot of community colleges are starting to pay more attention to specific student needs, including student parents, single parents, or parents that are returning to college,” Blankstein noted. “I think community colleges are looking for ways in which to scale up or develop resources, or even programming, for student parents. One of the goals of this project is to demonstrate not just what partnerships look like, but what partnerships could look like. Being able to see all of the priorities in the public library sector can maybe spur some ideas on ways in which they can further partner together.”

Public libraries are much more likely to provide resources and services related to food insecurity—63 percent—than community college libraries, at 14 percent. Transportation and housing insecurity resources were the least promoted library services in both types of libraries.

Currently the most common type of public-academic library collaboration is through shared collections, providing students and public library patrons with shared access through library cards and links to online collections.

LEVERAGING STRENGTHS FOR COMMUNITY BENEFITS

The Maximizing Public-Academic Library Partnerships project expands on Ithaka S+R’s earlier CCASSE (Community College Academic and Student Support Ecosystems) initiative, funded by IMLS, which launched in 2018. In the course of that work, researchers found that “a lot of community college libraries are either formally or informally partnering with their public library to some degree, or at least have some sort of connection to their public library,” said Blankstein. “It seems like such a natural fit for these two sectors to partner together serving the same communities and patrons. We really wanted to discover and explore that more with this project.”

Taken as a whole, this project’s initial findings suggest a range of opportunities for public and community college libraries to enhance their support for community needs and strengthen that support by building on the strengths of each sector.

In addition to expanding services, programming, events, and the accessibility of information, “Collaboration between these sectors can lead to more efficient use of those resources to reduce costs for already limited budgets.” Blankstein pointed out, and “can also encourage shared knowledge and the exchange of ideas, best practices, ways to engage the community and patrons a bit more substantially, and even provide a broader reach to new patrons, fostering more holistic community engagement to make libraries more accessible, and provide continuity across library programs.”

These findings will inform the next phases of the current project, which will include case studies of cross-library partnerships and state policy analysis, culminating in the establishment of a Library Partnership Development Institute made up of stakeholders from the project and interested librarians. Its goal is to create an implementation framework with recommendations and tools for both sides.

“Something we saw when we were developing this project is that there’s little guidance on how to forge partnerships between the sectors, let alone maximizing their resources to better serve their communities,” said Blankstein. “I’m hoping that through the Institute, and the development of that framework, we’ll be able to share those best practices and that information back to the library community.”