july04b.indd


C o l l e g e  &  R e s e a r c h  L i b r a r i e s  

Civic
engagement


in
academic
libraries



Encouraging
active
citizenship


by Nancy Kranich, Michele Reid, and Taylor Willingham 

This country cannot afford to educate 
a generation that acquires knowledge 
without ever understanding how that 
knowledge can benefit society or how 
to influence democratic decision making. 
We must teach the skills and values 
of democracy, creating innumerable 
opportunities for our students to practice 
and reap the results of the real, hard 
work of citizenship. . . . We believe that 
now and through the next century, our 
institutions must be vital agents and 
architects of a flourishing democracy. We 
urge all of higher education to join us.1 

Fifty­one college presidents signed this 
declaration in July 1999, articulating their 
commitment to take action against a trend 
toward civic disengagement. To date, another 
450 presidents have joined this effort to edu­
cate students as active and knowledgeable 
citizens.2 Why? Because they believe that col­
leges and universities have a crucial role to 
play in reinvigorating the democratic spirit of 
this country. While college presidents credit 
today’s students with their dedication to com­

munity service, they are seriously concerned 
that young people remain disconnected and 
disenchanted with public life. This essay will 
describe some exciting ways that academic 
libraries can collaborate with their institu­
tions to engage young people in the issues 
of the day and align themselves closer with 
campuses and communities. 

Renewing the civic education tradition 
In recent years, the academic world has 
rediscovered the once vital tradition of 
civic education.3 Many colleges now 
actively promote such public engagement 
as a critical part of their overall institutional 
mission—with faculty incorporating civic 
content into their curricula and encouraging 
students to participate in socially responsible 
extracurricular activities. Eager to connect 
liberal learning more directly with service 
and civic responsibility, the Association of 
American Colleges and Universities and 
Campus Compact launched the Center for 
Liberal Education and Civic Engagement in 
2003.4 Recognizing that a robust democracy 
and the public welfare depend on an engaged 

About the authors 

Nancy Kranich is an ALA past president and served as associate dean of libraries at New York University, e-mail: nancy. 
kranich@nyu.edu; Michele Reid is library director at McDaniel College, Westminster, Maryland, and is an NIF convener 
and moderator, e-mail: mreid@mcdaniel.edu; Taylor Willingham is an NIF Board member, a consultant who works with 
communities to identify issues, conduct citizen research, frame issues for public deliberation and convene, moderate 
deliberative forums, and educate students, e-mail: taylor@austin-pacifi c.com. 

© 2004 Nancy Kranich, Michele Reid, Taylor Willingham 

380 / C&RL News July/August 2004 

mailto:mreid@mcdaniel.edu
mailto:kranich@nyu.edu


and informed citizenry, campuses are now 
willing and eager to strengthen the study 
and practice of civic engagement in a diverse 
democracy and interdependent world. 

New civic engagement initiatives on 
campuses offer a perfect opportunity for 
libraries to fulfill their traditional roles of 
promoting civic literacy and ensuring an 
informed citizenry. Many academic libraries 
already present thoughtful, engaging, and 
enlightening programs about problems facing 
our democratic way of life—programs that 
encourage more active citizenship. Academic 
libraries also help students learn how to iden­
tify, evaluate, and use information essential 
for making decisions about the way we live, 
work, learn, and govern ourselves.  

Beyond serving individuals, academic li­
braries also provide real and virtual spaces to 
which faculty and students can turn to solve 
pressing problems. In short, libraries are ide­
ally suited to play a critical role in rekindling 
civic spirit by providing not only information, 
but also expanded opportunities for dialogue 
and deliberation that are essential to making 
decisions about common concerns. 

Over the last two decades, social scientists 
have proposed new models to invigorate a 
weakened democracy and to encourage more 
active citizen involvement with governance. 
More recently, a number of librarians have 
also published texts underscoring the key role 
that libraries play in building civil society.5 

These writers urge libraries to reclaim their 
civic mission by helping constituents learn 
about complex public issues and practice 
deliberative democracy, and by providing 
safe spaces, or commons, where students 
can discuss issues in a non­confrontational, 
nonpartisan, and deliberative manner.  Creat­
ing civic space through a formal process of 
deliberation reinforces the academic library’s 
essential position as the intellectual heart of 
the campus. 

Deliberative democracy in practice 
. . . deliberative forums are acts of 
discovery. They enable us to examine 
our own thinking more deeply and to 
open ourselves to different perspectives. 
They help us generate, individually and 
collectively, new ways of thinking about 
public problems and how we might work 
through them together.6 

At the heart of deliberative democracy is 
the belief that citizens can seek out solutions 
and common ground on complex issues that 
affect their everyday lives. When citizens de­
liberate together, they surface assumptions, 
learn about the costs and consequences of 
public policy alternatives, move from “I” 
to “we” language, and define their shared 
interests and values. Unlike many public fo­
rums where citizens are invited to advocate 
a position in three­minute rancorous debates 
and sound bites, deliberative forums are 
places where participants strive to listen to 
each other for deeper understanding, often 
discovering that their personal values and 
concerns can overlap with those who hold 
a very different perception of the issue and 
what should be done. Through these forums, 
participants often see new possibilities as well 
as potential trade­offs and consequences for 
different courses of action, prompting them 
to think and act in ways that consider the 
larger public interest. 

For more than 20 years, citizens have 
gathered in kitchens, churches, community 
centers, classrooms, and libraries to deliber­
ate using discussion guides developed by 
the National Issues Forums Institute (NIF) in 
conjunction with the Ohio­based Kettering 
Foundation,7 a nonprofit research institute 
dedicated to the study, evaluation, and pro­
motion of participatory democracy. Citizens 
have used NIF discussion guides to tackle 
topics such as the environment, economy, 
crime, public education, health care, and 
the Internet. The most recent guides explore 
concerns over bio­engineered foods, the role 
of the news media, terrorism, immigration, 
and America’s place in world affairs.8 

More than 30 institutions across America, 
including colleges and universities and 
civic and other grass­roots organizations, 
conduct NIF Public Policy Institutes to train 
citizens to convene and moderate forums 
and to frame issues of local concern. Those 
conducting local forums are encouraged to 
submit their results to the NIF network, thus 
connecting the participants in a national 
conversation. The results of these conversa­
tions are shared with the NIF network, the 
public, and policymakers. Annually, poli­
cymakers, journalists, subject experts, and 
citizens gather at the National Press Club to 
reflect on the findings. Their commentary 

C&RL News July/August 2004 / 381 



becomes a documentary called Public Voice 
and is broadcast on public television stations 
throughout the country. Recently, the results 
of forums discussing Americans’ role in the 
world became part of a series of broadcasts 
entitled “By the People,” moderated by the PBS 
NewsHour’s Jim Lehrer.9 

The NIF network publishes reports on 
forums that take place throughout the year. 
Unlike opinion polls that dominate the 
media and policymaker’s conversations, 
these reports paint a deeper and more 
thoughtful picture of the publics’ thinking. 
They provide more than a snapshot of a 
knee­jerk response to a pollster’s ques­
tion; they reflect what people think when 
they have had time to wrestle with each 
other’s and their own confl icting emotions 
about what should be done about complex 
public issues. 

For example, a recent report describing 
citizen forums about terrorism found that 
participants “turn[ed] conventional wisdom 
almost completely on its head . . . In spite 
of the alleged widespread public support 
for military action so often cited by journal­
ists and policy makers, forum participants 
declared that the war on terrorism should 
include military action only as a last resort 
and then only in conjunction with a broad 
coalition of allies.”10 

Deeply concerned about the country’s mood 
and a national climate of suspicion, partici­
pants felt a critical need to come together in 
deliberative forums, to build relationships, 
to seek understanding, and to fi nd hope, 
reinforcing the idea that “. . . community 
ends can only be defined through delibera­
tion—public talk—about our values and 
common needs.”11 

Libraries across the country and abroad 
often serve as vital partners in convening 
deliberative forums. ALA began encouraging 
libraries to host these forums in the 1980s. 
As President of ALA in 2000–2001, Nancy 
Kranich launched a program to expand in­
volvement by training librarians to organize, 
convene, and moderate forums and partner 
with other community groups to promote 
civic engagement and community building.12 

For academic libraries, the NIF approach can 
enhance a library’s teaching, programming, 
and networking in and beyond the college 
community. 

Academic libraries and deliberative 
democracy 

We believe that our institutions serve not 
only as agents of this democracy, but 
also as its architects—providing bridges 
between the aims and aspirations of 
individuals and the public work of the 
larger world. To that end, we commit our 
institutions to wide­ranging examinations 
of our civic and democratic purposes 
through curricula and extracurricular 
activities, socially engaged scholarship, 
civic partnerships, and community­based 
learning and research.”13 

At the dawn of the new century, state and 
land­grant universities committed themselves 
to this charge.  Today, academic libraries must 
embrace a similar charge, not only as agents 
of democracy, but as architects and bridge 
builders. With renewed interest in promot­
ing civic literacy and engagement around the 
country, academic librarians are well poised 
to grasp this noble cause, transcending their 
traditional role of providing research mate­
rials by building civic space that connects 
academe with community and global issues. 
At the nexus of multiple academic disciplines, 
the library can prepare future generations 
as leaders of an increasingly complex and 
divided world. 

To begin, academic libraries can sponsor 
deliberative forums that teach students how 
to make public choices together and demon­
strate the value of the deliberative process as 
a curricular tool. Librarians can also teach the 
theory and scholarship behind public politics 
as well as the methods of convening and 
moderating deliberative discussions. 

Another role librarians can assume is to 
guide the research and participatory action of 
students seeking to frame their own issues for 
deliberative forums, following the model de­
veloped by the New England Diversity Project. 
This partnership between the New England 
Center for Civic Literacy and Vermont Campus 
Compact is spearheading an inter­institutional 
learning community that will teach the prac­
tices of “deliberative” and “sustained dialogue” 
at several Vermont colleges. The project will 
help participating campuses use civic dialogue 
to address diversity, build community, learn 
techniques to deal with public issues, and 
model a form of civic leadership.14 

382 / C&RL News July/August 2004 

http:leadership.14
http:building.12


As moderators, librarians may structure a 
forum as a standard two­hour session or as a 
more thoughtful study circle, with one choice 
or viewpoint covered per week. 

Another approach is to offer short, hour­
long mini­forums at lunchtime with further 
discussion later in the classroom. Librarians 
can supplement deliberative forums with 
guest speakers or panels, and with Web sites, 
bibliographies, and online discussions, as in 
a recent Pennsylvania initiative. And librar­
ians can create additional public space by 
holding forums elsewhere on campus and 
preparing displays of relevant library materi­
als and handouts. 

Deliberative forums offer academic librar­
ians new opportunities to form alliances and 
partnerships on campus and beyond. By 
establishing a steering committee of infl uen­
tial faculty, administrators, and community 
leaders, librarians can strengthen outreach 
and expand participation. They can also 
enlist academic departments, administrators, 
development officers, Friends groups, alumni, 
and trustees for fundraising and promo­
tion. Involvement by community members, 
nonprofit organizations, businesses, school 
and public libraries, local government, and 
schools can result in welcome occasions for 
citizens to join a local college in promoting 
civic engagement. 

ALA hosts preconference workshops to 
train librarians as forum moderators at both 
the Midwinter Meetings and Annual Confer­
ences. Beyond training, these workshops 
allow ALA conference attendees to experi­
ence an open forum. Librarians that attend 
network with colleagues, and participate in 
additional training and related events in their 
regions.16 

Conclusion 
With colleges initiating exciting new programs 
to enhance participation in our democracy, 
librarians have an unprecedented opportunity 
to collaborate with their campus colleagues to 
strengthen the ability of tomorrow’s leaders 
to practice civic engagement and participate 
in our democracy. 

By sponsoring and promoting deliberative 
forums, librarians can foster student learning 
and faculty research while expanding link­
ages between the campus and its various 
communities. They can also deepen under­

standing of the relationship between liberal 
education and civic responsibility, helping 
students to look beyond the classroom to 
the world’s major questions and encourag­
ing them to apply their analytical skills and 
ethical judgment to significant problems 
around them. 

As John Dewey once wrote, “democracy 
needs to be reborn in each generation and 
education is its midwife.”17 Now is the time 
for academic libraries to assume their rightful 
role in creating a new generation of informed 
citizens capable of acting to address com­
plex, urgent social problems.  By committing 
themselves to joining the civic mission of 
higher education, academic librarians will 
become leaders and catalysts for renewing 
liberal education that prepares students to 
build civic capacity so vital to a fl ourishing 
democracy. 

Notes 
1. Center for Liberal Education and Civic 

Engagement, “Presidential Declaration on 
the Civic Responsibility of Higher Educa­
tion,” (Providence, RI: Campus Compact, July 
1999). www.compact.org/presidential/plc 
/declaration.html. 

2. An up­to­date list of signatories to the 
Declaration is available at www.compact.org 
/presidential/plc/signatories.html. 

3. Harry C. Boyte, “The Struggle Against 
Positivism,” Academe 86, no.4 (July/August 
2000): 46. 

4. For more information about Center for 
Liberal Education and Civic Engagement, 
see: www.aacu.org/civic_engagement/objec­
tives.cfm. 

5. Examples include: Redmond Kathleen 
Molz and Phyllis Dain, Civic Space/Cyber­
space: The American Public Library in the 
Digital Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999); 
Kathleen de la Pena McCook, A Place at the 
Table: Participating in Community Build­
ing (Chicago: American Library Association, 
2000); Ronald McCabe, Civic Librarianship: 
Renewing the Social Mission of the Public Li­
brary (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001); 
Joan Durrance, et.al., “Libraries and Civil 
Society,” in Libraries and Democracy: the 
Cornerstones of Liberty (Chicago, IL: American 
Library Association, 2001): 49­59; and, Nancy 

(continued on page 388) 

C&RL News July/August 2004 / 383 

www.aacu.org/civic_engagement/objec
www.compact.org
www.compact.org/presidential/plc
http:regions.16


 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

(‘‘Civic engagement...’’ continued from page 
383) 
Kranich (ed.), Libraries and Democracy: The 
Cornerstones of Liberty (Chicago, IL: American 
Library Association, 2001). 
6. Julie Pratt, ‘‘Capturing Public Thinking: 
Authentic Reporting on Public Forums’’ 
(Charleston WV: West Virginia Center for 
Civic Life, n.d.): 3. www.nifi .org/CapturPub- 
Think.pdf. 
7. More information about the Kettering 
Foundation is available at www.kettering. 
org. 
8. For a complete listing of available 
discussion guides as well as recent network 
news, events and other information, see the 
NIF Web site at www.nifi .org/. 
9. See the ‘‘By the People’’ Web site at 
www.pbs.org/newshour/btp. 
10. Doble Research Associates, ‘‘Terrorism: 
What Should We Do Now? Results from 
Citizens Forums’’ (Dayton, OH: National Issues 
Forums Institute, 2003). www.nifi .org 
/terrorism_03.pdf. 
11. Frances Moore Lappe, ‘‘Diet for a 
Small Planet’’ (New York: Ballantine Books, 
1971). 
12. Nancy Kranich, Anne Heanue and Taylor 
Willingham, ‘‘Libraries------Public Forums for 
Today’s Critical Issues,’’ American Libraries, 
34, #1 (January 2003): 68---70. 
13. Kellogg Commission on the Future of 
State and Land Grant Universities, ‘‘Renewing 
the Covenant: Learning, Discovery, and 
Engagement in a New Age and Different 
World’’ (Washington D.C.: National Association 
of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, 
2000): 24. www.nasulgc.org/publications 
/Kellogg/Kellogg2000_covenant.pdf. 
14. New England Center for Civic Life, 
‘‘The Northern New England Diversity and 
Community Project,’’ www.fpc.edu/neccl 
/nnedivcomm.htm. 
15. See the ‘‘Teaching Democracy’’ Web 
site at www.teachingdemocracy.org. 
16. For more information concerning 
the moderator training programs, contact 
ALA Member Programs and Services, (800) 
454-2433, ext. 2518; dponton@ala.org. Information 
about the NIF network and other 
partnership and training possibilities in your 
own community is available at www.nifi . 
org/ppi.html. 
17. As quoted in Elizabeth L. Hollander 
and John Saltmarsh, ‘‘The Engaged University,’’ 

86, # 4 (July/August 2000): 30. 

www.nifi
mailto:dponton@ala.org
http:www.teachingdemocracy.org
www.fpc.edu/neccl
www.nasulgc.org/publications
www.nifi
www.pbs.org/newshour/btp
www.nifi
www.kettering
www.nifi