What is a Minority?

I'm beginning putting together some info for my first report on minority services in libraries and one of the recommended actions is to take a survey of the community demographics to help you define what are the minorities. I started by looking at the QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau for my city and there's tons on breakdowns of demographics: age, race and ethnicity, nationality, gender, language spoken, economic status... But then it hit me that there are demographics of religion, sexual orientation, physical and mental capabilities (ex. blind/deaf)... it just keeps going!

This time around, I was interested in a few resources that can help me wrap my mind around services to the LGBT community. Local service communities include:

• Dallas Fort Worth Steering Committee of the Human Rights Campaign (hrc.org)
• North Texas GLBT Chamber of Commerce (since 2005) 
• Recourse Center of Dallas (rcdallas.org) (since 1983) (serves 50,000 annually)

 But then I got off track and ran the following Google Search: "trends minorities site:ala.org" and pulled the following links:

• This is a bib list of titles for Young Adult Mexican Americans. Surprise in the list is a book dealing not only with ethnicity, but sexual orientation and religion. (The God Box, which we have, high five, teen selector!) http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2013/05/05/its-not-what-you-think-mexican-americans-in-ya/
• Then there was this post "The Invisible Minority: LGBTQ Teens and their Lit: http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2012/11/09/the-invisible-minority-lgbtq-teens-and-their-literature/
• Quick Facts Services to Teens from ALA: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/advleg/advocacyuniversity/additup/13to18/quick
• This paper on awards lists and diversity mentions many of the minority / diversity things I mention: http://www.yalsa.ala.org/jrlya/2011/06/are-all-lists-created-equal-diversity-in-award-winning-and-bestselling-young-adult-fiction/
• and another paper: http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/conferences/pdf/ibarra05.pdf

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Much, much later. So, I submitted my first report and instead of starting with a review of our community and a look at where my system is currently in meeting those needs, I was counseled to pick just one user group and report of them with a focus on the actual programs. I, of course, included a selection of readings and a small review of literature to support why I selected the programs that I selected, just in case someone asked, "why do you think this programming is applicable to this user group?"

My first "minority" group I decided to present on is "Older Adults," and let me tell you, they are a scary bunch. My city is undergoing a new push to attract residents and business b/c "growth is the only way to support a city's revenues," and I learned some things about the Older Adults group that puts the city's initiative in a new perspective.

27% of our city is aged 50 and over. As this group ages into the senior citizen category over the next 10-15 years, our revenues will drop because the % of taxes that we collect on that age group decreases as a benefit to being old (and presumably having less money). Typically this wouldn't be an issue with traditional seniors with limited lifespans and who live in assisted living residences. BUT, the new Older Adult is not so old. This group is actually younger in mind and body. This group isn't going to sell their home and move into retirement homes. They are going to stay and age in their homes for 20+ years. (Decrease in revenue). They want services to provide entertainment and opportunities for socialization and engagement. (Pressure on revenue to meet demands.) They are a powerhouse voting block (politically powerful). This is what I mean by scary.

At the same time that this group wants to learn stuff, they need more time to learn new skills with frequent opportunities to practice. However, this group can be relied upon to support each other by sharing their expertise and in their willingness to volunteer.

My favorite library programs for Older Adults include:

• Cumberland County, NC: Downton Abbey Tea Party Series (historical talks followed by trivia); 
• Des Plaines, IL: Rotating deposit collections (50-100 items) at nursing homes and senior living centers
• Mecklenburg County, NC: Shutterbug Club (Digital photography series)*
• Various locations: 1:1 Techno Buddies Teens and Older Adults (supports skill building through assisted practice)

Notes on "Use of Public Libraries by Immigrants" article

I'll admit, I wasn't originally bouncing around in my chair for this assignment, but I'm the type that when it's time to get down to business, I throw myself in 100%. This first article turned out to be interesting material and I can tell that I will enjoy the learning process of this assignment.

Burke, S.K. (2008). Use of public libraries by immigrants. Reference & User Services Quarterly, (48)2, 164-174.

Key Points:

• data used for this research paper comes from the U.S. Current Population Survey from 2002
• comparison of households of immigrants from different world regions
• tries to find correlations b/t use and various socioeconomic factors
• two models of thought: service model (includes nice summary discussion of different services) and sociological model (this paper bases its research on that model)

Common Service Strategies:

• foreign lang materials
• bilingual and bi-cultural staff
• literacy instruction
• ESL courses

NOTE: the paper is clear to differentiate the information needs of newly arrived immigrants to that of established immigrants which would therefore result in different service strategies.

Immigrant Groups Surveyed:

• Canada, 
• Latin America broken into: Central Am. & Mexico, Caribbean, South Am.
• Europe
• E. Europe
• Asia broken into: E. Asia, S.E. Asia, S. Asia 
• Middle East
• Africa

Predictors of Use:

• the higher the level of education, the more use
• except when there are children in the household, then it's anything goes.
• influencer of use- confidence in speaking/writing English

Application of Research:
Best way to apply findings is to do a community profile to determine the ethnic make up of local immigrant groups in order to tailor outreach to community leaders in the specific groups that have been identified. The most insightful thing that I learned from this article was the conflict that can be created between a lack of culture training for staff and the barriers to library use that immigrants may have. For example, Asian groups are reported in the literature as being quiet users of the libraries, but that may be because culturally, Asians are more publicly quiet, so without knowing it, they are obeying library noise level rules. However other groups which may be culturally louder in public (think in Vieques where Reggaeton is loudly played on the beach), and which are also unfamiliar with libraries in their home country, may unknowingly break library noise level rules and incur the wrath of the shushing librarian. This is turn may exacerbate another barrier- a lack of trust of government agencies.

Minority Expert

The director of our system has identified some key areas she'd like her librarian staff to develop expertise in, I'm inferring so that should a patron come in and need specific help, or should the administrative office need research in a specific area, there is already a person who is up to date on the trends in that area. There are the usual subject areas of "law," "genealogy," "business"... Then there's "current trends in services to the disabled" and "current trends in minority services."

: D

I've given myself the tasks of:

1. doing a literature review
2. reading a couple of recently published books
3. follow up with a review of the major multicultural groups' activities out of ALA, PLA and TLA

This first entry on this subject will be my bibliography list, which I will update as I go along. Subsequent entries will blog the main points of the resources I'm reviewing. I'll be sure to tag all related posts "minority services."

Keywords and limiters for the literature review:

• minority OR Asian/African/Black//Vietnamese/Latino/Mexican American OR immigrant
• AND
• services OR outreach OR program(s)/programming
• AND 
• librar*
• 2000 - present (cause this is current trends in)

if anyone has any suggestions for what I might be missing, such as GBLT services. I'm all ears.

Bibliography (Articles)

Burke, S.K. (2008). Use of public libraries by immigrants. Reference & User Services Quarterly, (48)2, 164-174.

Bibliography (Books)

Smallwood, C., & Becnel, K. (2013). Library services for multicultural patrons : strategies to encourage library use. Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

List of Associations