Leading with Intent: Museums and Libraries and Collaboration, Oh My!

Abstract

More than two hundred children’s museums in the United States support interactive learning opportunities for young children. In contrast, there are more than 17,400 public libraries, including central, branch, and mobile libraries.

However, some families do not benefit from these anchor institutions. Five main factors were found to impact individual use of public libraries alternatives, awareness, and understanding of universally free libraries or understanding them as only providing books, access hours operation, location and transportation, experience or not feeling comfortable, or previous bad experiences and interest.