What Libraries and Centers for Independent Living Can Learn from Each Other
By Christina Clift
Last week, Karie Doss and I traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, to attend the Association for Rural and Small Libraries Conference. It was an eye-opening opportunity to step into the world of librarians and learn more about the challenges they face every day. I came home with an even greater appreciation for libraries—and with a stronger belief that libraries and Centers for Independent Living have much more in common than we might realize.
As we end year one, we are moving from planning and developing ideas toward putting those ideas into practice. Beginning in October, the project will enter an exciting new phase as we begin implementing, testing, and learning from the resources we have created. The CARE materials are designed to help organizations assess their communities, build relationships, share expertise, improve accessibility, and develop programs together.
More Alike Than Different
One of the things that struck me during the conference was how similar libraries and Centers for Independent Living really are. At Disability Connection Midsouth, we call the people we work with consumers. Libraries call them patrons. Whatever word we use, both organizations are trying to create places where people know they belong.
Libraries connect people with books, technology, information, programs, internet access, and community resources. Centers for Independent Living connect people with information, advocacy, peer support, independent living skills, transition assistance, and community resources. We both believe people should have access to the information and tools they need to make their own choices and participate fully in their communities. Those shared goals—serving the community, connecting people with information, promoting inclusion, building relationships, and creating opportunities for participation—are at the heart of the CARE partnership.
Andrew Carnegie once said that a library “outranks any other one thing that a community can do to benefit its people.” After spending several days with rural and small-library professionals, I understand that statement in a new way.
My Complicated Relationship with Libraries
Growing up, libraries were places that I loved and disliked at the same time. I have always loved to read. I loved the idea of being surrounded by shelves filled with stories, information, history, and possibilities. But as a blind person, most of those shelves were not really available to me.
Other people could walk through the stacks, pull a book from a shelf, read the back cover, flip through a few pages, put it back, and choose another one. I couldn’t browse independently in that same way. Most of the books were in regular print, so my choices were often limited to a much smaller section of large-print books or audiobooks.
The library welcomed me, but the collection itself often reminded me that being present is not the same thing as having equal access.
That experience is one reason accessibility matters so much to me today. Inclusion is not simply opening the door. It is asking whether everyone who comes through that door can actually participate, explore, communicate, learn, and make choices.
As Maya Angelou said, “In diversity there is beauty and there is strength.” That strength only grows when diversity is not merely acknowledged but included.
Libraries Are More Than Books
Libraries are also safe places. For a period of time, I waited for my ride every day after work at the Frayser Library. It was a dependable place where I could sit safely until my transportation arrived.
For many people, libraries serve that same role in ways the rest of us may never notice. They are places to warm up on a cold winter day or cool down when the Memphis summer becomes unbearable. They provide internet access to someone applying for a job, a quiet place for a student to study, help for someone trying to navigate an online form, or simply a welcoming place for a person who has nowhere else to go.
Centers for Independent Living often serve a similar purpose. People may initially come to us looking for housing information, help understanding a service, assistance with transportation, or someone who understands what it is like to live with a disability. Sometimes what they need most is a place where they are treated with dignity and where disability is understood as part of the human experience rather than something that makes them less valuable.
Shared Challenges—and Shared Opportunities
Unfortunately, libraries and Centers for Independent Living also share many of the same challenges.
We struggle with staffing. We compete for limited funding. We constantly look for better ways to reach people who may need our services but do not know we exist. Rural communities face additional barriers related to transportation, distance, limited resources, and fewer service providers.
We also operate at a time when organized efforts in communities across the country are challenging diversity, inclusion, equity, and access. Libraries may experience those pressures through challenges to books, programs, displays, or efforts to welcome historically excluded communities. Disability organizations continue working against barriers that limit whose voices are heard and who gets to participate.
Both of our movements understand something important: community spaces should belong to the whole community.
That is why the CARE Project makes so much sense. Disability Connection Midsouth is based in an urban area, but our service area extends beyond Memphis. Through CARE, we hope to strengthen our presence and relationships in Tipton, Fayette, and Lauderdale Counties, where rural residents with disabilities may have fewer opportunities to connect with disability-specific resources.
A local library may already know people we have not been able to reach. We may have disability expertise that can help a library improve accessibility or create a new program. Rather than building separate systems, we can build something stronger together.
As Helen Keller put it, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
That sentence captures what CARE is really about. Year one has been about listening, learning, sharing ideas, and building the tools. October begins the next chapter: putting those ideas to work in real communities. The project will also begin connecting people through the Rural Independent Living and Libraries Peer Network. We are excited to see what happens when librarians, disability advocates, consumers, patrons, and community partners begin building those bridges together.
Because sometimes the resources a community needs are already there.
We just have to connect them.
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