Grant for Studying How Public Libraries Can Help Prepare For Extreme Weather

Posted on January 20, 2023 by Clara Tran

The Department of Civil Engineering, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, and the University Libraries at SBU are currently collaborating on a grant project to identify gaps between community needs and available services at Long Island libraries that serve socio-economically diverse populations and operate in areas with varying population densities and socio-demographic characteristics. The objective of this project is to develop a transformation framework for utilizing libraries as resilience hubs to create sustainable, scalable, and transferable positive impacts on community-identified priorities, particularly the needs of underserved communities.

This one-year study will conduct foundational work necessary to implement a comprehensive study of libraries’ potential as local resilience hubs. The study will 1) develop a resource inventory and typology of libraries on Long Island based on geography, socio-demographics and other factors, 2) create a pilot survey and interview protocols and test these instruments on librarians and library users on Long Island, with the goal of attaining 50 completed surveys of library users and conducting 10 in-depth interviews with librarians on Zoom or in person, 3) utilizing the outputs from the previous tasks, create a draft resilience framework for local libraries, as well as a series of testable hypotheses for the national study.

The SBU Summer 2022 OVPR Seed Grant was awarded to the principal investigator Anil Yazici, Associate Professor, co-principal investigators Assistant Professor and Faculty Director of EDP, Donovan Finn, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, and Clara Tran, Head of Science and Engineering, University Libraries.