On Wednesday, October 4, 2017, Onondaga Community College’s Coulter Library hosted its fourth Human Library event. This event provides a way for people to reach out and connect with individuals in their community with whom they might not normally interact. Visitors to this library had an opportunity to borrow and engage in conversation with a Human Book. Human Libraries promote tolerance, celebrate differences and encourage understanding of people who come from varied cultural or lifestyle backgrounds. This year the themes for the event also included the OCC’s 16-17 academic year Diversity Council’s theme “Dreams are Empowering” and the campus community read “God Grew Tired of Us” topics.
Over 220 “readers” were able to chat with 51 different “books”. Several faculty members encouraged their students (from approximately 20 classes) to participate as readers. Student assignments varied from writing reflection papers to giving speeches about their experiences at the event.
We had a reader survey response rate of approximately 80%. More than 95% of readers who completed the survey indicated they had a good or very good experience at the event. Many readers noted they enjoyed learning by engaging in conversation and would definitely attend another Human Library event. Here are some specific reader answers to the question “What was the most important aspect of your checkout experience?”:
“ Just listening and learning about each individual journey and feeling inspired by it”
“ Learning that it (the topic) wasn’t at all of what I thought before.”
“ Talking about cultural differences.”
“ Learned about a potential future career”
“ You never know what someone is going through unless you actually take the time to listen.”
The book volunteer surveys we received also indicated that our volunteers enjoyed the experience and learned a lot from their readers and each other.
Photos from the event are available here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/coulterlibrary/albums/72157686052728662
Today @ OCC: A Conversation with a Book (Human Library article) is available here: https://news.sunyocc.edu/2017/10/13/a-conversation-with-a-book/
To launch an event of this scale requires an incredible amount of work and coordination. Therefore, we want to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to the various departments and individuals that were instrumental to the success of this event.
- Planning Committee Members
- Faculty Advisory Committee Members
- Human Books: We had 25 faculty members, 17 local community members, 6 administrators & staff, and 3 students participate as books.
The above summary was submitted by Pauline Shostack, OCC, who is also a member of CLRC’s Human Library Planning Group. This group is made up of a cross-section of librarians from academic and public libraries who meet to discuss human library events that have taken place and to provide input related to future events. Interested in becoming part of the group? Email Jen Bort.