Suchergebnisse

Considered a great tool of democracy, libraries are open to all who choose to use them, regardless of race, gender, or creed. Therein lies both the greatest strength and weakness of libraries: because libraries provide resources chosen by librarians for patron use, libraries unwittingly "deny access to their resources to certain social classes." In diverse communities, libraries are often limited as to the extent to which they are able to deal with varied, and sometimes unknown, information needs. All of this leads to the questions of who is well served by libraries and who is left behind. ; Considered a great tool of democracy, libraries are open to all who choose to use them, regardless of race, gender, or creed. Therein lies both the greatest strength and weakness of libraries: because libraries provide resources chosen by librarians for patron use, libraries unwittingly "deny access to their resources to certain social classes"� In diverse communities, libraries are often limited as to the extent to which they are able to deal with varied, and sometimes unknown, information needs. All of this leads to the questions of who is well served by libraries and who is left behind. Latinos are one of the fastest growing populations in the United States, but the desperately small number of Latino librarians cannot provide cultural reinforcement for the large number of Latino patrons. To best serve this population, libraries must seek out Latinos' feedback on the services libraries provide. Two questions are explored in this project: How do Latinos perceive libraries as an institution? How does library philosophy influence Latinos' perceptions?

Considered a great tool of democracy,1 libraries are open to all who choose to use them, regardless of race, gender, or creed. Therein lies both the greatest strength and weakness of libraries: because libraries provide resources chosen by librarians for patron use, libraries unwittingly "deny access to their resources to certain social classes." In diverse communities, libraries are often limited as to the extent to which they are able to deal with varied, and sometimes unknown, information needs. All of this leads to the questions of who is well served by libraries and who is left behind. ; Presentation ; Includes bibliographical references.

In the Midwestern U.S., there is a growing population of Latin American immigrants. This increase is driven largely by employment opportunities in generally low-skilled, low wage fields such as meat processing and packing, and other agricultural fields. As a result, rural towns with relatively few resources are welcoming a growing number of non-English speaking immigrants who may not have experience with the practices and institutions of the U.S. such as libraries, schools, hospitals, or social support services. The agencies that usually work with linguistically diverse immigrant populations are churches, schools, and university extension departments. Building off previous research, this paper reports on ten interviews with gatekeepers about their work in reaching and engaging with Latin American immigrant populations. Three interrelated themes emerged from the interviews: the importance of language, of providing relevant services, and of cultivating trust. Drawing from the experiences reported by the gatekeepers as well as the literature, the authors discuss implications for small rural libraries that might not be equipped to take over gatekeeping roles, but that want to work with immigrant communities. Ultimately, the authors recommend that rural libraries liaise with established gatekeepers to the greatest extent possible.

Arizona is at the forefront of Latino population growth and political and racial politics. Three different factors could potentially influence the provision of library service to Latinos in the State of Arizona. These are 1) the growth of the Latino community and the consequent growth of its library needs, 2) the growth of state legislation that is hostile to immigrants and Latinos, and 3) the promotion of a pro-immigrant position by the library profession. This paper compares services to the Spanish-speaking in the State of Arizona from 1999 to 2009 in light of conflicting pro- and anti-immigrant sentiments operating in the state during that decade. ; Post-print ; Includes bibliographical references.

How do readers describe multicultural fiction works? While in library and information science (LIS) we have the language of appeal factorsand genre trendsto describe works of fiction, these linguistic choices may not be used by readers to describe their own responses and reactions to works that provide cultural affirmation of one's own culture or exposure to learning different cultures. In this research, text mining processes are employed to harvest reader-generated book reviews and subsequently analyze the words readers use to describe award-winning multicultural fiction on the retailer site Amazon.com. Our goal with this study is to provide LIS professionals an insight into readers' perspectives related to multicultural fiction. We describe our methodology of engaging in topic modeling as described by Jockers and Mimno (2013) as applied to multicultural fiction reviews. First, we explore the construction and processing of a corpus of reader reviews of multicultural fiction titles, then we model topics using a topic modeling toolkit to generate topics from these reviews. Through this analysis, we determine consistent terms used to describe multicultural fiction that can be used to indicate common reader experience and identify topics. Closing discussion reflects on whether librarians can use text mining of reader reviews to enhance their reader advisory services for readers seeking books that represent multiple and/or diverse cultures.