Pre-service Librarians’ Perspective on the Role of Participatory Design in Libraries with Youth

Participatory Design (PD) is a design methodology that incorporates the end users in the design process. An active area of research in PD focuses on designing new technology with children. As more libraries are offering different technologies to their patrons—especially to children—there is an increasing need to think about how to best incorporate such technologies into library services. Recent interest in the field has encouraged librarians to situate themselves as designers, and to find creative solutions to the problems that arise in library settings. However, design methods are not widely utilized in the field of library and information science. In this study, we have interviewed pre-service librarians and children participants who did participatory design in libraries within a service-learning course. These participatory design sessions focused on incorporating new technologies into library programming. Our study indicates that PD is a possible method for capturing the ethos of librarianship. Pre-service librarians found that PD allowed them to effectively enact values of service, such as democratic participation and creativity, while children valued being heard from adults in the library and helping their community.