Responding to the Community: Exploring Library Staff and Participants Roles in Creating Programs for Radio Broadcasting

Abstract

Radio has long been an effective, dependable, and equitably accessible format for presenting educational content. Building upon the strengths of this medium, researchers from the University of Texas and the University of Alabama organized a pilot cohort of public library staff and families for the project “Raise Up Radio in Libraries: Family and Youth Engagement in Library Supported Learning Via Radio.” This design-based research project seeks to meet the educational needs of rural communities through collaborative production of a series of audio programs that can be broadcast on local radio or shared as a podcast. This poster discusses the experience of library staff and project participants in selecting STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) content. Despite similarities in service populations, cohort libraries selected divergent topics based on community assets such as local experts and popular community resources. This poster compares the participating libraries and the factors that lead to topic selection. It reminds government officials and library administrators that even though libraries may have similar aspects (i.e. size, resources, number of patrons served), each location is individually unique. Therefore, the implementation of educational programs must include flexibility for library staff to effectively address community needs.