Cook County Digital Navigator Network Guiding Team
A Guiding Team of 15 individuals representing libraries across suburban Cook County began its work in November 2025 to advise in the co-design and shared vision of the Cook County Digital Navigator Network. Reflecting the diversity of Cook County’s public libraries across factors like position titles, geographic location, community size, cultural representation, and funding levels, these dedicated individuals bring important library worker and trustee perspectives and leadership to our countywide collaboration. The team ensures that the work remains grounded in library practice, responsive to community needs, and informed by diverse perspectives from across suburban Cook County.
Apply to Join
We are currently accepting applications for Guiding Team members for the next one-year term, beginning in November 2026. See below for more information on the team’s work and expectations and complete the application form if it sounds like a good fit. Download the worksheet (PDF) below to preview the application questions or draft your responses before completing the webform. Applications are due Friday, October 16, 2026 at 5 pm Central.
Guiding Team Charge
The Guiding Team will advise and collaborate with RAILS and Cook County in the following areas:
- Strategic advising: Provide ongoing guidance on program priorities, implementation strategy, resource allocation, and emerging opportunities.
- Network co-design: Help develop grants, training, resources, tools, communications, and other network supports before and during broader implementation.
- Practitioner leadership: Share ideas and practices, identify implementation challenges, recommend improvements, and elevate innovations from libraries and communities.
- Network stewardship: Strengthen relationships across libraries, identify opportunities for collaboration and peer learning, and help cultivate an active community of practice.
- Continuous learning: Surface emerging needs, reflect on implementation experience, assess network effectiveness, and help the initiative adapt over time.
- Ambassadorship: Promote the network, encourage participation, and help connect libraries to available opportunities and to one another.
Guiding Principles
- Design with those closest to the challenge. The network will be shaped by libraries with the greatest opportunity to benefit—not only those with the greatest capacity to participate. The team will intentionally center the experiences of libraries with limited staffing, resources, and technical capacity.
- Build with practitioners, not just for practitioners. Libraries are co-designers of the network, not simply recipients of grants, training, or resources. Practitioner expertise is essential to creating solutions that are practical, equitable, and sustainable.
- Strengthen the Countywide ecosystem. The network should foster relationships, peer learning, and shared leadership across libraries, partners, and communities. Success depends on building capacity across the ecosystem—not only within individual organizations.
- Learn, adapt, and improve. The network should evolve based on implementation experience, emerging needs, and ongoing learning. Feedback is an ongoing part of program design and improvement, not a one-time activity.
Membership
The Guiding Team will include approximately 12–15 representatives who bring diverse perspectives across geography, community size, library resources and staffing, populations served, cultural and linguistic representation, and experience with digital navigation. Members will be appointed by, and serve in collaboration with, lead personnel from RAILS and Cook County.
To acknowledge the organizational support and staff time required for Guiding Team participation, each member’s library will receive a stipend.
Considerations for balancing the Guiding Team’s composition include:
- Varied library staff roles, including directors, librarians, technology staff, department leads, frontline staff who work directly with patrons, seasoned library workers, and new professionals
- Libraries currently providing robust digital navigation services and libraries still building their capacity
- Libraries with limited staffing, without dedicated technology staff, or serving communities experiencing significant barriers to technology access and use
- Experience with relevant grant programs, service models, partnerships, and professional communities
- A mix of members who can contribute specialized expertise and members who bring broad, community-facing perspectives
- Engaged non-staff champions, such as trustees, municipal leaders, and community partners
Term
Members serve a renewable one-year term beginning in fall 2026. At the end of the term, RAILS and each member will have an opportunity to reflect on participation and confirm whether continued service is mutually beneficial.
Requested Commitment
The work will include both synchronous and asynchronous participation. The cadence and format may shift as the network moves from design and early implementation toward growth and sustainability.
Synchronous participation:
- Full Guiding Team meetings held monthly, primarily via Zoom and generally lasting up to 90 minutes
- Kickoff meeting on Monday, November 9, 3:00-5:00 pm
- Monthly meetings beginning in December 2026 or January 2027 on the 2nd Thursday, 3:00-4:30 pm
- Attendance at a minimum of 75% of scheduled full-team meetings; members should communicate anticipated absences and participate through an alternative pathway when appropriate
- At least one in-person gathering during the one-year term, with timing and location communicated in advance
- Optional or time-limited design workgroups, practitioner interviews, regional conversations, or listening sessions aligned with members’ interests and expertise
Asynchronous participation:
- Reviewing draft program materials and providing focused feedback
- Responding to occasional emails, short surveys, or requests for reflection
- Gathering input from colleagues or sharing relevant information from members’ libraries and communities
- Sharing project information and engagement opportunities through organizational and professional networks
- Using the network’s collaborative communication space to exchange ideas, resources, questions, and emerging needs between meetings
Asynchronous work will generally be limited and clearly scoped. Not every member will be expected to contribute in the same way or to every activity; participation will be matched, when possible, to the work at hand and to members’ experience, interests, and availability.
What Members Can Expect
RAILS and Cook County will support meaningful participation by:
- Providing clear agendas, background materials, and requests in advance whenever possible
- Facilitating accessible, purposeful meetings with multiple ways to contribute
- Closing the feedback loop by communicating how member input influenced decisions and where constraints affected the final direction
- Creating opportunities for members to learn from one another, build relationships, and access emerging resources and practices
- Respecting members’ time, expertise, organizational responsibilities, and accessibility needs
- Providing a stipend to each member’s library to acknowledge the organizational support and staff time required for active Guiding Team participation during the one-year term