Sonoma County Library will take home a national award for its program, Together at the Table.
Library representatives will accept the award at a ceremony this summer in Washington, D.C. The library was recognized in late March by the Public Library Association.
Together at the Table began in 2018 and is the brainchild of Kathy DeWeese, the county library’s youth services administrator. The aim of the program is to hold discussions on “hot-button” topics in a safe environment where differing opinions can be expressed without fear of retaliation.
“This was my passion project. It didn’t really fit in my job position,” DeWeese said.
She said she saw heated national discussions and wanted a way to provide a more localized approach to addressing them.
Cal State Library has federal grant funding called Pitch an Idea, which is exactly what DeWeese did. The idea was well received and work began on creating topics.
Topics included an LGBTQI discussion, being black in America, climate change and more. Topics were bimonthly and each topic had an event each month. Events rotated through all the county’s library extensions.
The topics were scheduled to line up with similar national heritage or pride months.
In order to hold informed discussions, the library partnered with 30 area organizations and gathered materials to support arguments from all sides.
“It seemed like our community was hungry for that opportunity to talk about those things they read about in their newspaper,” she said. “It was heartening to see people expressing differing opinions about hot-button topics and feel respected and heard, even if they did not agree with others’ opinions.”
Even before the topics began, she said she received feedback as to why a topic was being discussed and not another, and also heard back quickly about what people thought on a topic.
“We said, please, come to this event and share those opinions,” DeWeese said.
At the events, she said, discourse was professional.
“We had people who said, ‘I don’t agree with you,’ and people were comfortable sharing different opinions,” she said.
An example, during the LGBTQI event, was that people expressed frustration over changes in pronoun use to be more non-gender binary. Even though the opinion is not a popular one in Sonoma County, guests were still able to have discussions about the why of differing opinions, as opposed to shouting matches.
DeWeese said that one of the ways the program was made so open was by explaining right out the gate what the intention of a safe discussion space was.
In addition, the library planned for difficult discussions and word use by partnering with local organizations. For instance, what to do if the discussion on being black in America turned to use of racial slurs. No one used a slur in a derogatory way, but DeWeese said they were prepared for it, and it was interesting to see the differing opinions of partner organizations as to how to handle situations.
The partners also had a chance to explain what they did in the community on the hot issues, further educating the audience.
DeWeese said that when they receive the national award, the library will also have a chance to share with other libraries how the program succeeded, which may in turn expand it to other areas of the country.
The award comes with $1,000, which DeWeese said will go back into the program, which cost up to $1,200 per topic in material costs.
Together at the Table will move to a quarterly basis. Future topics will include cannabis and white privilege.
To share an idea or provide feedback to the library on Together at the Table, visit the library website at sonomalibrary.org. On the Together at the Table page under the services tab, there is a survey available.
