By Ann Plazek (plazek@mcdl.info) | Project Read is a partnership between the Medina County Sheriff’s Department and the Medina County District Public Library. Is your library outreach department interested in working with your county jail or prison system? Not sure how you would fund such a project? Here is how we got started… Our MCDL Outreach Department approached the superintendent of our county jail about starting a program similar to Storybook Project that was started in Texas. The goal of the program is to educate incarcerated parents about the...
Intersections
About Intersections
Intersections, the blog of the ALA Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services (ODLOS), highlights the work of library and information science workers as they create safe, responsible, and all-inclusive spaces that serve and represent the entire community, as well as initiatives and projects supported by the office that promotes their work. Please note that these blog posts are by individuals and do not reflect the views of their employers.
By Samantha Yanity (syanity@ala.org) | As a child, I began my life as a voracious reader hungry for knowledge and enamored with words. Feeling left out that my older siblings and my mother (all avid readers) were regularly engaged in conversations about their current read, I begged my mom to teach me how to read at age four. My mother brought me to the public library routinely as part of our regular outing. Library visits, to me, became as exciting as going to the zoo, park, or a museum. To this day, I find comfort in the library and often when I am stressed out, I visit a library to...
By Melissa Solis (melissa.solis@sdcounty.ca.gov) | It starts with a border crossing. This year’s Seguimos Creando Enlaces Conference will be held on both sides of the border. Now in its sixth year, the free conference will gather librarians from the United States and Mexico on March 9th at CETYS University in Baja California and March 10th at the San Diego Central Library. Conference Chair Ady Huertas understands the impact of the annual event. Huertas explains, “The Seguimos Creando Enlaces Conference is a true collaborative effort that creates links across libraries,...
By John Amundsen (jamundsen@ala.org) | When we launched Intersections back in October, Jody (Director of ODLOS and my boss) said that she wanted us all to write a post reflecting on our individual perspectives on the issues we work with our members to address. As the blog’s ‘editor,’ I figured it would be good if I would step up to write one of the first staff-authored posts. To say that this post was difficult for me to write is an understatement. My role is to facilitate and highlight the work that our members do: the uncompensated, hard, often emotionally taxing, but...
By Tom Twiss (ttwiss@pitt.edu) | This past June two leading Palestinian librarians addressed the ALA annual conference in Orlando on the topic “Palestinian Libraries Under Occupation.” The program with Randa Kamal, President of the Palestinian Library Association, and Diana Sayej-Naser, director of the main library at Birzeit University and general coordinator of the Palestinian Library and Information Consortium (PALICO, represented the culmination of more than a year of effort and collaboration between Librarians and Archivists with Palestine (LAP) and the Social...
By Andrew Luck | When the Paterson Free Public Library applied for the ALA/Dollar General American Dream grant, we had few ESL resources when compared to the needs of the community. The city of Paterson is over 50% Hispanic with burgeoning Turkish, Arab, Bengali, and African communities as well. Additionally, with almost 50% of the city’s population “not in the labor force”, over a quarter of the population living below the poverty line, and the high school graduation rate at 70%, it was clear that the residents of Paterson would benefit from more ESL offerings...
By Tina Williams (twilliams@whiteoaklibrary.org) | Reaching out to the community is a vital part of Library services. Five years ago, I started the Outreach Services Department at the White Oak Library District with the charge to serve the older adult population. Our District is comprised of approximately 80,000 people across three towns. Older adults make up almost one quarter of the population. I started by getting to know the community and figured out how the Library connects to their daily lives. We serve patrons in various types of communities: independent living communities,...
By Teneka Williams (twilliams@georgialibraries.org) | In the past year, librarians in the communities of Ferguson, MO, Baltimore, MD, and Charleston, SC were confronted with civil unrest while trying to maintain a presence in the community as common ground for all served in their community. As 21st century librarians, we are aware of the technological advances that are steadily increasing our need for continued training. However, as the last year has shown, we are in need of sociological training for communities as our world becomes smaller and more diverse. ALA Core...
By Katrina Spencer (katrina.spencer@wisc.edu) | In October of 2016, a group of students from the i-School at the University of Wisconsin at Madison met to discuss ways to better serve Spanish-speaking patrons. This document includes some of the observations that arose during that discussion, oriented primarily towards reference/service/circulation desk interactions in public libraries, and humble suggestions about providing service to this growing demographic. While this conversation began in reference to Spanish-speaking communities, many of the points below will be relevant for serving...
By Micah Kehrein (Micah.Kehrein@spl.org) | At the beginning of 2016, the American Dialect Society announced that the word of the year is the singular ‘they.’ For me, this was really exciting, because “they” is my gender pronoun, and over the 5 years that I have asked folks to use this pronoun for me, I’ve definitely heard my fair share of “It’s not proper grammar.” Not anymore, folks! But back to the reason for this blog post, they is a really useful word for library employees and really, folks in customer service in any profession. As a...