Tell Me About the Library of Your Dreams: Community Art for Learning User Needs

Abstract

Participatory or Community based art projects have long been used to understand the priorities, needs, and perceptions of a community. Within the context of an academic library, community art projects can foster a sense of engagement and send a strong message that participants' thoughts, ideas, and feelings matter. By providing a prompt in the form of a question, and scaffolds for expression in the form of images that can be colored, drawn, written upon, a safe, inclusive, and fun space can be provided for sharing thoughts, ideas, suggestions, feelings about the library, and how the community uses and interacts with it.