RJ@PL Grant Project
GRANT NAME: Civic Engagement for Racial Justice in Public Libraries” (RJ@PL). Funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ National Leadership Grants for Libraries (NLG-L) – FY 2022 Guidelines [LG-252354-OLS-22]. [August 2022 – July 2025]. Terminated April 8, 2025: President’s Executive Order 14238.
The RJ@PL project in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama and the Chicago State University’s Department of Computer, Information and Mathematical Science and Technology builds the capabilities of public librarians and selected communities to lead civic engagement and promote positive social change by advancing racial justice in their environments and within their work settings.
Racism is a human rights issue. RJ@PL addresses and implements select solutions to the call for transformative change and racial justice put forward by the U.N., U.S. government, and library associations.RJ@PL is a multipronged action research project that analyzes professional experiences and behaviors in selected library communities and workplace and operationalizes tangible deliverables while implementing select externally/internally centered components of strategic action plans and programs.
RJ@PL Goal
The RJ@PL team collaborates to meet the following project goals: 1) Assessment of public library efforts to promote racial justice and civic engagement externally as a community agency and internally as a workplace; 2) Operationalization of a responsive and participatory strategic planning process using a theory of change to develop action plans that further racial justice; 3) Implementation of key strategic components that support racial justice in select domains of community life (e.g., agriculture, economy, education, environment, public policy, health, information technology, law and justice, manufacturing/retail, social welfare, and youth/family learning).In the process, alliances between public libraries (local/county/regional/state) with external stakeholders (e.g., farming communities; chambers of commerce/economic councils; schools, colleges, and universities; medical/health centers; criminal justice systems; businesses/corporations, etc.) will facilitate the development and implementation of information-based offerings in six/eight library settings to promote racial equity and civic engagement initiatives. RJ@PL began on August 1, 2022, and will be completed by July 31, 2025.
RJ@PL Initiative
RJ@PL serves as a testbed focusing on the southern public libraries and their selected communities located in its seventeen regions as a pilot with implications for national-level impact.The United States Census Bureau’s demarcation of the southern region and its three divisions include groupings of sixteen states (i.e., Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia) and the District of Columbia. This proposal adopts the definitional scope of the region based on geography following the national classification, while acknowledging the diversity in their varied history, dissimilar environmental conditions, and diverse cultural characteristics of political and economic conditions, among other aspects.
RJ@PL develops “promising practices” of civic engagement for racial justice that integrates the concept of equity (as compared to equality) in representing the uniquely rich and varied contextualization within broad frameworks of praxis (i.e., critical, reflective, and action-oriented).
Civic engagement means working to make a difference in the civic life of communities by creating intellectual spaces (physical and virtual) or “civic commons” for communities to engage and work together for what they perceive as the public good. It is linked to community engagement where public institutions collaborate with their external and internal stakeholders to find mutually acceptable solutions to contemporary concerns in the RJ@PL southern public librarians and their select communities assess, plan, and implement information-based offerings to promote racial justice.
RJ@PL Benefits
The RJ@PL focuses on the constructive aspects of asset management and strengths planning in the southern region to advance positive directions that its public libraries are pursuing, and can continue to promote, in presenting a fair and balanced picture of the region. It spotlights the affirming stories of impact, leadership, civic engagement, and racial justice that have been overlooked in the past.RJ@PL’s experiences will provide localized solutions tailored (and responsive) to the regional contexts recognizing the need to develop real solutions based on authentic ground-zero cultural differences.
RJ@PL develops a bottoms-up instead of top-down strategy. It provides an alternate strategy to a standardized “cookie-cutter” approach that is based on limited homogenization without the specific applications to local conditions leading to scattered and isolated solutions that do not reflect the complexities and realities of each case condition.
The flavor and regional characteristics integrated in the RJ@PL does have strong national relevance. The RJ@PL structure can be replicated around the country and is generalizable. Its approach of linking needs assessment, strategic planning using a theory of change, to implementation is pertinent to promote racial justice praxis anywhere in the nation (or the world).
RJ@PL Design
RJ@PL has been conceptualized in terms of five interrelated components (see Figure 1): (1) Assessment; (2) Strategic planning; (3) Actualization of information-based solutions; (4) Evaluation; (5) Dissemination.
Insert Figure 1
RJ@PL develops and uses a theory of change (ToC) model as the organizing framework to drive the social change for racial justice by public libraries and develop the community engagement frameworks and strategic action plans.
RJ@PL includes various objectives including the following:
Objective 1: To implement two quantitative online surveys and collect feedback from library staff about race-based concerns in their communities (1A) and within their work settings (1B). A third online survey will collect feedback from library community stakeholders in the 17 regions about race-relations in their environments (1C).
Objective 2: To conduct qualitative focus groups/interviews with library staff from each region about their challenges to further racial justice in their external communities and in their internal work settings.
Objective 3: To develop and refine community engagement frameworks and strategic action plans using a theory of change for external and internal relationship building during 12 strategic planning workshops (online and in person) that will include prototype designs for particular domains with potential actions, resources, and promising practices.
Objective 4: To implement select information-based solutions and programming that furthers civic engagement for racial justice in external and internal constituencies at six/eight exemplar libraries.
The project outcomes will help develop the public library as a community anchoring institution that promotes racially just community development by addressing racialized experiences in the southern U.S.
Contact
For more information, please contact Dr. Bharat Mehra (205-348-5259; bmehra@ua.edu) at UA SLIS or Dr. Kimberly Black (773.995.2143; kblack21@csu.edu) at CSU CIMST.
RJ@PL Partners
UA SLIS faculty Dr. Bharat Mehra and CSU CIMST faculty Dr. Kimberly Black are partnering with multiple state and public libraries, including Alabama Public Library Service (AL) (Dr. Nancy Pack), Athens Regional Library System (GA) (Valeria Bell), Austin Public Library (TX) (Roosevelt Weeks), Birmingham Public Library (AL) (Janine M. Langston), Georgia Public Library Service (GA) (Julie Walker), Howard County Library System (MD) (Tonya Aikens), Kentucky Department for Libraries & Archives (KY) (Terry Manuel), Library of Virginia (VA) (Sandra Gioia Treadway), Louisville Free Public Library (KY) (Lee Burchfield), Maryland State Library Agency (MD) (Irene M. Padilla), Northwestern Library System (NC) (Joan Sherif), Richland Library (SC) (Melanie Huggins), Richmond Public Library (Scott R. Firestine) and Suffolk Public Library (Clint S. Rudy) (VA), Tennessee State Library and Archives (TN) (Maria Sochor), and others to participate in the various grant activities that will be documented on the project website.
