In the summer of 2020, we engaged in a participatory design process (also known as co-design) with 137 library staff from across the United States. These library staff provided insight into how public libraries built services to support non-dominant youth and families during crises. Through this work, we learned that these staff had a library servant instead of a public servant mindset. Public servants make decisions with community members. Library servants make decisions for them. We designed and published a Field Guide to help public library staff better understand how to work with and for communities during crisis times. We share our findings related to library staff mindsets in this paper
