King County communities are dynamic places filled with busy people, burgeoning ideas, opportunities for activities of all kinds, and, on occasion, civic issues that stir considerable interest and potentially conflicting views.
How can the best collective decisions be made easier and what role can libraries play in creating the best possible decision making?
- Libraries believe in the open exchange of ideas. They intentionally provide free and neutral access to a broad range of the best possible information. Because of this they naturally act as catalysts to discovery and to conversation.
- Free, open and informed dialogue inevitably uncovers common ground, which naturally invites collaboration.
- Collaboration results in better communities.
Convey is a new initiative of the King County Library System (KCLS). This System-wide effort to foster civic engagement will take many forms, each of which will be appropriate to the needs of the communities KCLS serves.
There are three KCLS Convey projects in 2013.
The first is an open invitation to conversation and education about drug use in the Snoqualmie Valley. The Snoqualmie area project will be conducted in partnership with the Snoqualmie Valley Community Network starting late in the summer.
The second project, in partnership with the Downtown Issaquah Association, will focus on the past, present and future of Issaquah.
The third Convey Project will be about hunger in King County.
The first Convey project from 2012 was the support of a wide-ranging conversation about the possible future uses of the Cross Kirkland Corridor. Staff in the Kirkland/Redmond cluster worked in tandem with the City of Kirkland and the Kirkland Arts Center to create a series of opportunities in person and online for individuals to learn and to make suggestions about the potential uses of the former Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railway. All of the public input was given without any alteration to the City of Kirkland.
As a neutral third party, KCLS' role is to gather and disseminate information. KCLS is not responsible for or involved in evaluating, proposing or giving preference to any suggestion, submission or proposal.
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