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University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Library & Information Science
Progressive Librarians Guild UH Student Chapter Coffee Talks
Libraries Serving Marginalized Communities
Monday 8 October 2018
Academic Libraries
Who are the marginalized members of the academic community?
Homeless students
First generation students
Nontraditional students
ESL students
Undocumented students
What is the role of the academic library with providing outreach and services to this population?
How can we reach out to undocumented students without putting them at risk?
Should the library offer programming to educate students about resources available to them?
What library programs or services could support this population?
Are academic libraries only responsible for the students and faculty of their institution? Do academic libraries have a responsibility to the greater community?
Can we offer services to marginalized members of the local community who are not affiliated with the university?
Does the academic library have a responsibility to provide access to information to the local community who are not affiliated with the university?
Should we allow for community members to access the library’s resources, databases, journals, and to check out library materials?
Public Libraries
International issues in librarianship: European libraries serving Syrian refugees.
Something as small as offering a place to charge phones can have a positive impact.
Homeless and houseless population, what is the library’s responsibility to serve this population?
We discussed this at length and we seem to all agree that it may be beyond the library’s mission and responsibility to provide social services. A solution that we believe may work best, and has been implemented at many libraries, is creating partnerships with local organizations, social services, and community resources to provide help to this group.
Homelessness
There are many libraries already reaching out to the homeless population, either with a full time social worker, social work volunteers, public health nurses, or programming focused on providing information and support to this population.
“Community card” concept: should libraries allow homeless or houseless individuals to check out materials? What is the cost of this, and how likely are the items to be lost or damaged? Should “community cards” allow for computer use within the library only?
There are libraries that have outreach programs to local shelters that literally, physically meet patrons where they’re at to promote library services.
What might this look like in Hawaiʻi? Could we reach out to homeless encampments and provide information about the library’s resources?
What libraries are currently doing
Coffee and Conversation ⇒ homeless patrons invited to roundtable discussion with speakers often talking about what resources are available in the community. This started at a library in Dallas but has expanded to other libraries in the country.
Africawala, J. (2015). Program model: coffee & conversation. Programming Librarian. Retrieved from: http://www.programminglibrarian.org/programs/coffee-conversation
Honisett, A., Short, R., & Schwab, K. (2018). Building community at the library with coffee and conversation. OLA Quarterly, 23(4), 20-25. Retrieved from: https://commons.pacificu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1919&context=olaq
Community Conversations at San Mateo County Libraries: https://smcl.org/blogs/post/community-conversations/
Library Social Workers and social work student volunteers and interns in San Francisco and San Diego
Public Health Nurses in the Library in Pima County Arizona
Queens Library in New York meeting patrons in shelters to provide outreach services to women and children
Denver Library’s Peer Navigator program: https://www.denverlibrary.org/blog/chrish/peer-navigators-help-demystify-social-service-system
The Human Library: http://humanlibrary.org/
Redwood City Public Library in California hosted a Human Library event: https://www.redwoodcity.org/departments/library/events/human-library