With funding from ECMC Foundation, Ithaka S+R launched the Maximizing Public-Academic Library Partnerships initiative to explore the ways academic and public libraries can collaborate to support students and their broader community’s basic needs. As we investigate how these partnerships manifest in real-world settings through case studies, we’ve had the opportunity to engage with two librarians at Bakersfield College on a collaboration that revitalized the Shafter Library and expanded access to library services for the community.

In 2024, Ariel Dyer and Faith Bradham, both reference and instruction librarians at Bakersfield College, co-authored a case study about their library’s partnership with Shafter Library, a rural, public library. After closing during the pandemic, the county library system did not reopen Shafter Library due to post-pandemic operational challenges; it remained closed until the 2024 partnership with the City of Bakersfield expanded library services and offerings for the community. Bakersfield College, a public community college in Bakersfield, CA, serves over 40,000 students and holds the designation of a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), while Shafter Library, located in Shafter, CA, serves a small rural community of about 18,000 residents in the southern Central Valley. The establishment of this partnership between a public community college and a rural public library presented a unique opportunity to show how these types of libraries can collaborate to build greater capacity to provide their patrons with resources and services.

Today we share our interview with Ariel and Faith, highlighting their college’s pathway to collaboration in order to offer a roadmap for others who might be looking to build effective library partnerships to better serve their communities.

Formation of the Partnership

Can you describe how the partnership between your library and Shafter Library materialized? What were the key factors behind this collaboration and how did they influence the planning and execution of the project?

Ariel: I’d say that key figures, rather than factors, led to the reopening of this public library under an entirely new management structure. After one big “no” (the county refusing to open the branch after a pandemic closure and community outcry), a series of different people in various positions saying “yes” really made this happen. At the top administrative level, the then-chancellor of the Kern Community College District (KCCD), a KCCD trustee member, and Shafter City Council along with their director of education partnerships entered into a contractual agreement for a 10-year partnership to sustain public library services. When I came into the picture, the decision to partner had already been made, but the “how” had to be figured out largely by the Learning Center manager, the director of education partnerships, and me working together. Looking back now, it feels like a relay race that we’re still running.

Faith: This partnership evolved from the KCCD Board of Trustees—there was a particular trustee who took an interest in Shafter Library and saw an opportunity for Bakersfield College to help revitalize this library. The trustee worked with the City of Shafter to get them on board with the idea, after which the City voted to withdraw their library from the Kern County Library system and enter into the partnership with KCCD (and specifically Bakersfield College). The Bakersfield College Library only became aware of our involvement in Shafter Library after much of the groundwork to create the partnership had already happened. So, a key factor was definitely this trustee as the guiding force behind the initial idea, but the library would have never gotten off the ground and become as successful as it is now without Ariel’s hard work and vision on the project, particularly since none of the Bakersfield College librarians at that time had real public library experience.

Key challenges

What were the most significant challenges you faced throughout the partnership, and how did you address them? What unique challenges did you encounter specific to small and rural communities during this partnership? What strategies would you recommend for other small libraries or institutions facing similar issues?

Ariel: Given today’s increasingly polarized political climate and fervor that often sucks libraries into its tailwind, it did not take long for the ideological disparity between a small, rural town’s leadership and a community college district to emerge. Shafter has a fierce pride over its development, and anyone coming from outside town limits can sometimes be met with caution. Moreover, the city’s management, in comparison to the often slow-moving bureaucracy of a college district spanning multiple counties, can move at what feels like an alarmingly fast pace to Bakersfield College staff.

Faith: We also found there was a general lack of understanding both from the KCCD Board of Trustees and from the City of Shafter regarding what libraries do and the differences between public and academic libraries and librarians—we got the sense that these administrators did not realize that a public library has a very different mission and audience than a community college library, and we felt the need to advocate for the residents of Shafter to have a true public library that serves the community rather than serving only Bakersfield College students. I’d definitely recommend any other small libraries considering similar partnerships to start by making sure all stakeholders understand the mission and impact of a public library and that there is a clear plan for on-site management.

Community Engagement

What impact, or desired impact, does this partnership have on your community and patrons? What feedback did you receive from patrons?

Ariel: The Shafter community loves its library, and keenly felt its loss during the pandemic. Reopening its doors in partnership with KCCD and the city provides access to a new and improved collection as well as a space for children and parents to engage in informal learning. One of the biggest issues I sought to mend when I began working on this partnership was joining a library consortium. As a small rural library, our limited space could not begin to meet the needs for materials of the entire community. Now, through a partnership with a library consortium south of our county and a grant from the state library we can ensure a robust collection even beyond our walls. Feedback from community members, in the beginning, was positive as well as constructive: the teens who would sidle up to the circulation desk asking “where is the manga” when we didn’t yet have any, the adults who worried how they would get the books they were used to getting now that we were no longer part of the county system. It was the kind of attention that let us know that this library is used and that the users know they can make requests for improvement. The highest compliment in the form of patron feedback that we receive these days is the children being dragged crying away from the children’s reading/play room, imploring their parents “not yet!”

Faith: This partnership has brought some unexpected positive impacts to Bakersfield College (BC) by incorporating bits and pieces of this public library endeavor into the larger BC community. For example, Shafter Library is now working with BC’s Child Development Center to bring rotating monthly book bag sets from Shafter Library to the Child Development Center for checkout by the children and parents at that center. Additionally, Ariel has used her experience developing the children’s collection at Shafter to revitalize our BC Library children’s collection, which was primarily created for our Child Development students who need to research and read children’s literature.

Advice for Future Partnerships

What advice would you give to other organizations looking to create similar partnerships? What steps have you taken to ensure the ongoing success and sustainability of the partnership?

Ariel: I hate to be extremely boring here, but researching and writing standard operating procedures have really paved the way for continued success, in so much as that’s possible on an administrative level. Policies, contracts, and what the staff and I refer to as the “library bible” that includes all the processes we have so far standardized make us look like we’ve got it more together than we probably do. I also think that, with collaborative partnerships, you probably need to brag more than you think you do. Communicating successes of the partnership via presentations at city or college councils, presenting at conferences and including multiple stakeholders in your presentation, and generally spreading the word can keep good will and information-sharing between partners strong.

Faith: I’ll reiterate what I said earlier regarding the management structure: it’s important for similar partnerships to clearly and realistically lay out who will be in charge of making day to day supervisory decisions for the library and its staff as well as big-picture decisions. Ideally, that person would be able to be on the ground, in-person at least one day a week and would also have knowledge of and experience in libraries. This will not only help decisions to be made faster and easier, but it would make communication between the partners and within the library much clearer and more effective.

Key Takeaways

In your opinion, what was the most important takeaway from your case study? What would you say was the most surprising or intriguing finding?

Ariel: The most surprising finding for me was probably just how much work this partnership took. That may be funny to hear, considering I was heavily involved in that work, but it’s true. In the library profession, we tend towards romanticizing the labor we put in, because of its societal importance. But I think that library professionals should more often recognize, delineate, and put a tangible value on what we do, in order to revitalize and fortify the field. Taking the time to thoughtfully consider how this academic-public partnership worked out in reality helped me realize that we really did a lot, and still have more work to do. I hope that library workers who read our case study feel empowered to advocate for their work, and that library administrators can better understand the oft-underlooked contributions of those workers.

Faith: When we started crafting this case study, I think both of us were feeling fairly frustrated by a couple of aspects of the partnership. Writing out the case study and critically assessing the partnership’s impact on all stakeholders and both sets of communities ended up clarifying just how valuable this revitalization of Shafter Library truly has been to the community of Shafter, as well as some of the unexpected benefits it’s had on the Bakersfield College Library side. It was nice to go from feeling a little querulous to realizing that we had actually done something pretty cool!

For more information on the partnership between Bakersfield College and Shafter Libraries, read Ariel and Faith’s case study.