Creating A Safe, Welcoming & Healthy Library
DC Public Library
Innovation Synopsis
In 2025, DC Public Library updated its long-standing Rules of Behavior transforming them into a new Code of Conduct. The goal was to create a Library our customers love – a safe, welcoming, healthy environment where everyone can learn, explore, enjoy, and reach their highest potential. At the project’s center was a comprehensive staff engagement strategy, with a cross-departmental staff working group, focus groups, workshops, and survey, and broad public engagement with focus groups, survey, and intercept interviews with the library’s diverse stakeholders, including teens and advocates of the unhoused. 300 staff and 2,500 customers and stakeholders provided feedback. The result is a new Code of Conduct centered in clarity, equity, inclusivity, and safety, and sets out clear expectations for staff and customers. The project is a model for how libraries can develop policies that balance their responsibilities to staff and customers with their organizational mission, values, and goals.
Challenge/Opportunity
The Conduct Project was designed to address 5 issues:
The Library’s rules hadn’t been updated in over a decade and were out of alignment with the needs of our customers.
The Rules didn’t support many of our key priorities, including providing a safe and healthy environment where staff would feel empowered to enforce rules, and all customers feel welcomed.
Customers reported that a lack of consistency in enforcement was confusing and, at times, felt unfairly applied. The project focused on improving clarity and consistency, while ensuring equity and transparency in enforcement.
Staff shared their need for regular training to improve their confidence in communicating and applying the library’s rules while serving customers.
Feedback revealed the need to address customers who repeatedly disrupted library operations, impacting staff and customers. The Project addressed this by updating the consequences of infractions for greater clarity and ease of enforcement.
Key Elements of Innovation
The Conduct Project stands at the cutting-edge of innovation:
It was driven by feedback from our diverse community of staff and customers, including a cross-departmental staff working group. We partnered with the Parks & Recreation Dept. and Health & Human Services Dept. to reach the broad base of customers through trusted messengers.
We focused on building a strategy, structure, and system for the success of our new Code of Conduct. The new rules are grounded in effectiveness – always answering the question: how can we create a safe, healthy, kind, welcoming environment for staff and customers? The system for success is 3-fold: clear rules, consistent communication of rules to our customers, and consequences that are age-appropriate and enforceable.
The resulting rules are rooted in the Library’s core values – which remain intact, irrespective of our dynamic environment: Give and Get Respect; Be a We; Invest in Us; Welcome Everyone; and Stay Rooted.
Achieved Outcomes
Enhanced trust and transparency with our staff and customers: Our staff-led engagement program included a 22-member Staff Working Group, a survey completed by 200+ staff, and focus groups of 100 staff, as well as broad public engagement (14 focus groups of 140+ customers, 2,400+ survey responses, and 84 customer interviews at all 26 libraries.
Increased staff confidence and empowerment: Through in-person training, staff are better informed and more skilled in effective enforcement.
A Code of Conduct that serves our community: The Library’s rules now reflect the inclusivity, equity, respect, and appreciation that our customers expect.
Customers who are informed: Our comprehensive customer education program, uses myriad channels including social media and in-branch signage to ensure that all customers are fully informed of our Code of Conduct.
Of note – the policy was posted in the DC Register for 30 days. We did not receive a single comment in opposition to the final
