You Defined Bold — Now What?
In our last blog, we invited library staff to define what bold means to them.
If you ran through the exercise with your library, or even if you didn’t, it may be clear simply from looking at our own answers that “bold” has no fixed definition, spirit, or size. The same program that’s considered routine in one library could be considered radical in another.
That’s because boldness is measured against each library’s own conditions — which include everything from budget and governance to staff and community makeup to local politics and press exposure.
This is exactly why Embolden by Design (ExD) doesn’t try to define bold for you or prescribe programs for your library to run. Rather, we’re big believers in creating a shared framework your library staff can use to decide what bold programming looks like and the next steps to take.
Let’s dive in.
Bold is local
Arriving at a shared definition of bold can be pretty inspiring. But then something like this might happen: The definition just sits there . . . on the whiteboard . . . staring at you. Some brave soul points out the obvious: “That’s great. We did this. Cool. But, we can’t be bold here.” And they might be on to something. Because here is very specific.
The core idea that what is bold for one library is ordinary for another means there’s no actual hierarchy of boldness within the vast library programming arena. There’s nothing concrete sitting atop a pyramid for every library to aspire to. There’s only an idea you may have and the distance it takes to travel there from your own starting line.
That starting line is made up of a lot of factors, such as:
Where you are: Your library’s geographic location, local political climate, local support, or lack thereof
What you have: Budget, funding structure, resources, staff size and capacity
Who makes decisions: Individual staff, the library director, the board, local government
What’s at stake: Staff buy-in, community enthusiasm, positive press coverage, other stakeholders' buy-in
To help illustrate the concept of individualized starting lines, here are some examples of bold programming scenarios by libraries of different sizes, locations, and community needs:
A small rural library decides to offer a program series holding candid teen conversations, which it’s never done before. Mental health services and after-school programs have been cut in the county, and the number of at-risk youth is rising. Working with local partners, the library wants to provide a supportive environment for teens to be vulnerable and open with each other.
A suburban library system decides to design a new program series about information literacy. Frontline staff have been getting requests every day about a variety of hot-button topics, and can see the level of both concern and confusion percolating in the community about what’s real or true. Staff creates the program series to help the community improve how they receive and vet information, and further responds to the need through curated displays and resources.
An urban library branch continues a program spotlighting Black female scientists throughout history, despite pushback from a candidate running for local office. The candidate raises doubts about the merits and motivations of programs like these, although the majority of program participants resoundingly appreciate them and have asked for more.
In all three scenarios, each move was considered bold for that particular library. They each recognized their own baseline — i.e., their comfort zone — and decided to move past it, taking an intentional programming risk to address a need and an audience.
Bold is boundary-pushing
Your comfort zone is just that . . . comfortable. But will doing things the same way you always have get new results? Will your library reach new audiences, develop new relationships, enable deeper engagement, or help the whole community understand how the library impacts their quality of life?
When you start looking at your comfort zone and recognizing where the edges lie, you can also find the places where you can push on them.
Return to the shared definition of bold on your whiteboard and remember the impetus for doing the exercise in the first place. It was likely about your library arriving at some kind of an inflection point — a readiness for staff to embrace change, take a bigger programming risk, increase their confidence, or a similar goal.
Instead of stopping at: “That’s great. We did this. Cool. But, we can’t be bold here.”
Keep going: “Or can we? What if here is exactly where we most need to be bold?”
The very act of asking the questions, of stepping beyond the initial worries and objections, is getting out of your comfort zone. Based on Harvard’s work around this idea, and the examples above, when you push on the boundaries a bit, your library can gain:
An expanded view of the community and your library’s role in it
The ability to develop new and creative solutions to challenges, problems, or needs
Greater resilience when dealing with obstacles and uncertainties
More advocates and supporters
Bold is ultimately your business
Let’s be clear though: If someone on the outside were to swoop in and prescribe an edgy program to offer your community, you could end up with something your staff doesn’t own and would have a hard time getting behind. With no one to really advocate for it, the program could easily fold if members of the community or other stakeholders complained about it.
Instead of being told what kind of program to run, you and your staff work together with ExD to determine your own scale of boldness. This looks like:
Making the decision to stretch beyond your comfort zone, doing so with confidence, and standing behind the decision — together
Creating programming intentionally that feels new or risky but is still in line with your community’s needs
Using a shared language, decision process, and program development framework that’s repeatable, so that bold programming can become part of your library’s DNA and not just a one-off event
It’s worth restating: Bold is what makes sense for your library and community.
Taking a bold first step
A bold first step doesn’t have to make the biggest splash. Think of something doable that makes the second step possible, then the third, and so on.
Also consider this: What sometimes keeps libraries in limbo are the same things that keep all of us in limbo — and that’s waiting for the right circumstances before we make a move. In the library space, this could be waiting for the new director to be hired, the next budget cycle, a quieter election year, the hostile board member to leave.
As we discussed above, the conditions in which your library operates matter very much to the decisions you’re able to make and the priorities you’re able to set. And while some conditions may improve or change over time, the reality is there will always be a new condition that can impact programming priorities and timing.
So as you factor in the current circumstances of your library and community, what’s a bold first step (or two or three) you can take today — no matter what’s happening around you — that’ll help get your programming idea that much closer to fruition?
Partnering with ExD
We created ExD for the complex environment libraries are operating in today. ExD offers a full-day, onsite staff training experience with collaborative program development, promotion and press materials, and evaluation tools, plus follow-up support — everything your staff needs to create and deliver bold, community-centered programming with confidence and to keep doing it after our partnership wraps up.
Let’s talk about where your library is, where you want it to go, and how we can help.
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