Community Dialogues to Enhance Community Engagement and Reach Underserved Audiences in Informal Education Venues

The Space Science Institute's National Center for Interactive Learning (NCIL) manages the STAR Library Network. STAR Net focuses on helping library professionals build their STEM skills by providing "science-technology activities and resources" (STAR) and training to use those resources. Its Discover Health, Project BUILD, and NASA@ My Library projects have developed a Community Dialogue Framework to assist public libraries in reaching out to underserved audiences, finding subject matter experts (and other) local partners, and making a more meaningful effort to really understand the needs of their community. This framework is a loosely facilitated conversation between library staff and community leaders and decision makers. They have included local government, school officials, museum staff, and even the owner of the local sandwich shop who "knows everybody and everything about this town." These dialogues have been conducted in almost 100 libraries and have led to new and long-lasting partnerships, new donors, and opened the door for libraries to work with communities they previously thought were out of reach. While NCIL has created this framework for public libraries, there is strong evidence that this strategy can work in other informal learning venues. In fact, some venues who have participated in these dialogues have scheduled their own. In this session we plan to discuss successes of this framework, as well as have a discussion about how it can be adapted to other venues, while still maintaining the main goal - making spaces more welcoming to underserved and underrepresented groups.