WebJunction

This article first appeared in the Winter 2003 issue of Colorado Libraries.

When I started work at the Glendale Branch of the Arapahoe Library District over fifteen years ago, the branch was housed in a small portable classroom building situated behind low cost apartments in the north section of Glendale.   The building was tiny and the hours of operation were very sparse, but my new supervisor told me that I “could make this into whatever I wanted it to be”.  It became clear that new refugees and immigrants were coming into the community because of the low rents and proximity to bus lines.  Many of those new arrivals were from Russia, the Soviet Union at that time, and it happened that one of them had been a library manager in Russia and wanted to learn the ways of American libraries.  Diana Dvorkina had a dream of continuing her profession in America and of working in a library that could make a difference in the lives of patrons.   She started to work with me as a volunteer and continued as a paid staff member, we began a partnership that lasted until her death in 2000, and we did change the Glendale Branch into something new and exciting and very busy.

We began to serve the new arrivals from Russia with bilingual help and the beginnings of a bilingual collection. Patrons requested English as a Second Language (ESL) classes and we started with a volunteer teacher and one small group meeting around our only table.  Two LSCA grants enabled us to start a popular collection of Russian Language materials and a collaboration with the City of Glendale gave us a new home, the fourth floor of the Glendale Community Center.  This new location gave us a change to grow in all areas of service and collections.  Since moving into the Community Center, library circulation has grown more than 4,400%. The first few years had huge increases in library use, but each year has shown significant growth in library use with an average of 23% growth in each of the last five years, including 27% growth during the current year.  At the time of the move we also began a collaboration with Spring Institute for Intercultural Learning to help us expand patron-requested English as a Second Language(ESL) classes.  This program is now our largest multi-cultural program, and one of the largest low-cost ESL Programs in the metropolitan area, and served over 500 people in our last program year.

Although we have become known as “The Russian Library of Denver,” we served people from 27 different language groups in our English as a Second Language Program last year.  Our community continues to be a place where new arrivals from many countries begin their new lives in America.    Our largest patron group continues to be Russian speakers with Spanish speakers as our second largest group.  Our third largest group is comprised of Arabic speakers from a variety of countries.  When we participated in gathering data for a gala event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the City of Glendale, we found out that people in our community came from at least 55 countries. Census figures report that Glendale has the highest percentage of foreign-born people of all municipalities in Colorado and 42.2% of Glendale residents speak languages other than English at home.   Many of our Russian-speaking patrons no longer live within the city limits of Glendale, but travel from other areas to use our services. This year, for a national survey, we calculated that at least 77% of our total library use comes from those who speak languages other than English as their first language.  In our community of library users, native English speakers are in the minority.  It has been an exciting time of growth, experimentation, and service.  I would like to share with you my “top ten list” of things I have learned as we grew to provide service to new arrivals.

1. Be Flexible and Think Outside the Box

Cultivate an atmosphere of “how can we do that?” and “who can help us do that?”  Our library was very small when we started, only one room, and is still very small even though we have added an additional floor in the Glendale Community Center. We have a total of 7,000 sq. ft., with 3,500 sq. ft. for Public Library Space and 3,500 sq. ft. for classrooms and staff offices.  No one thought that this little library would grow so quickly - both in use and popularity. When Diana and I started doing outreach we were the only staff members and now there are nineteen, including on-call staff, a majority of whom are bilingual.  We had to be willing to try anything and to be flexible with our ideas.  Trying new collaborations became essential because we did not have a large budget to begin our work.

We had to ask questions constantly as we began to learn the business of serving new immigrants and refugees.  We had to find partner agencies and make contacts with others who were already in the business and could help us and act as referral agencies for our patrons.  We often met to brainstorm ideas, to plan things we would try, people we would try to meet, and questions we needed to answer.  It often surprised people to hear from us because they had never worked with a library before and did not know much about library service.  However, we found many creative partners to help us once we made the initial contact.   We believed that anything was possible, and we looked for ways to make things happen through partnerships, grants, or other creative solutions.

It was also essential to have administrative support and we were blessed with a Library District administration that would let us try all our creative ideas.  They wanted to hear our success stories, supported our collaboration building and grant writing efforts, and did not stop us from trying new and different things. As we grew and experienced success, our administration supported us with budget and staff. After Diana’s death, I was able to continue our new work with new bilingual staff in leadership positions.  We were also inspired by stories from other libraries in other states and learned from their successes.

2. Build It and They WILL Come and Keep on Coming

If you provide staff or volunteers who speak the language of the “newcomer” group and provide materials in the group’s language, the “newcomers” will amaze you with their use of the library.  It helps to have native speakers on your staff to build a level of trust, and it is important to be able to offer more than just your collection.  You will need to be able to answer questions about all sorts of “social services” issues.  I certainly had no background in many of the issues our patrons asked about, but we began to collect information and, more importantly, contacts who could help us.  You will need to network with service providers and agencies that can give you current referral and contact information and help you keep abreast of continuous changes in programs, services, and laws. You will find your staff providing life saving information on a wide variety of topics.

The new arrivals we have served became outstanding library supporters.  They constantly thank us for helping them and for providing relevant materials, answers to difficult questions, and ESL classes for them. Many serve as library volunteers, vastly enhancing the range of native language expertise we can provide.

3. Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate

We owe much of our success to our many creative collaborations.  We needed to take the time to meet people and build networks.  Our ESL program is successful because of a collaboration with a nonprofit educational organization, the Spring Institute for Intercultural Learning, which provides staff, teachers, training, curriculum, volunteer coordination, and an additional group of people to help with fund raising and planning. Some of the programs you plan may need constant fund-raising efforts to be successful, and so partners for this work are essential.

Give yourself time to attend meetings with service providers and staff of many other agencies.  The library has been a member of the Colorado Refugee Network Council since it was founded, and we are, therefore, able to work on collaborative grants and to network with people who are on the cutting edge of Immigrant and Refugee service issues. In all these years, we have been the only library representatives to participate in this group, so do not be surprised if you are the only librarian at the table.  This has been the case with many of the meetings I have attended.  However, through this process, I encountered many wonderful partners who had never considered working with a library and were pleasantly surprised with that idea.  Additionally, collaborations make for much stronger and more successful grant proposals.

Try to stay connected with local government so that leaders in your community can participate in building and celebrating service to diverse populations. 

School Districts, churches, service organizations, social service agencies, and local employers can be good potential collaborators.  These partners can help identify newly arriving populations and can join with you to plan services.   Please contact me for a list of our major collaborators to help you begin brainstorming ideas.

4. Location is Not Everything

Our library breaks all the rules.  We are not in our own building.  We are housed in a community center owned by the City of Glendale and have the top two floors above the Fire Department.  We are not on a “main” street with lots of traffic.  And, as I have described, we are small. Because of the services we offer, the availability of bilingual staff, and our varied collections, we have experienced only dramatic growth in the use of the library. People will find our library and tell others.  We often have people referred to us from many other localities throughout the state and they visit the library when they make a trip to Denver.

Often, we find that we barely have to mention a program or upcoming event.  Our patrons spread the word so that we receive calls the same day the first announcement is released.  Newly arriving communities have the strongest communications network, and they will spread the word.

5. Be Prepared for Publicity

We have been featured in newspaper stories and television news spots; honored with numerous awards; and asked to speak at a variety of functions and workshops – so we must always be prepared for publicity.  You will become known for the service you provide and people will seek you out and tell others about your work.  Have fact sheets and handouts about your library ready at all times.  Be prepared for surprising questions.  Don’t be startled by requests to facilitate meetings between reporters and people of a certain ethnic or language group whose stories reporters are following. Be ready to field questions and be visible.  Have key staff available and prepared to handle reporters and to provide current facts and figures. 

Once one of our Russian-speaking librarians was on a flight headed back home and found that other Russian speakers on the same flight, from other states, had heard about our library.  When our staff member was surprised, one person remarked that everyone knew about the “Russian library” in Denver, Colorado. 

6. Hire Bilingual Staff

The value of bilingual staff, paid or volunteer, cannot be emphasized enough.  Our success in reaching Russian speakers is directly related to our ability to speak with them, respond to their questions, and provide reliable information.  We would not have been able to start our Russian collection without someone who could read the Cyrillic characters of the Russian alphabet and who could talk to vendors in Russian. When we first started collecting Russian language materials - before the fall of the Soviet Union – almost nothing was available through traditional sources. Now it is easier to buy materials in foreign languages and materials can be a good start for any outreach program.  Keep in mind, however, that use of the collection is aided by staff who can read the language, keep up with trends and, importantly, know which authors are popular with the population you are serving. They can also talk about books with patrons and provide real readers’ advisory services in the language that people are reading.  Folks love to talk about the materials they use, in their own language. 

When it comes to providing information to help new arrivals adjust to their new life in America, a native speaking helper who is bilingual in English is essential.  Trust is built as your staff interacts with people, advocates for them, and serves as a communication bridge between them and others. Someone who has been through the “immigrant” or “refugee” experience can be a great help to newer arrivals.  Use bilingual volunteers if you cannot add staff.

7. Be Prepared to Innovate

We were the first library in Colorado to have Russian Language word processing for staff and it was a huge innovation for its time.  When the World Wide Web came into our library we made sure that folks could access Russian Language sites in Cyrillic characters, and we still provide an easy way to change keyboard mapping so that patrons can do word processing in Cyrillic.  We also made sure that people can easily change into a variety of alphabets and fonts for Internet use.  We are now a popular location for international e-mail and viewing news in other languages.  Our computers are used by people from countries the world over - all accessing sites and news in their own language.  Newly arriving populations cannot afford their own computers as they begin a new life, but they need to use them for many things. Use of computers will be your most multi-cultural service if your technology stays current and if you offer popular software applications.  Even if you cannot provide staff to speak all the languages in your community, they can still access news and information in their language on the computer. 

Unfortunately, our library cataloging system does not have a Cyrillic interface, so it takes more staff time to help patrons access our Russian language collections. It takes more bilingual staff interaction to provide access to languages with non-Roman alphabets as patrons often cannot guess how we spell words in their language when we transliterate them for cataloging.  Now we are able to put library information on our library district website in Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. This can be helpful for new arrivals.

Your staff will need to be on the lookout for new vendors and sources for materials.  Our Russian collection librarian keeps busy working and negotiating with existing vendors while constantly searching for new vendors.  For years, the best way to get the latest materials was to use a preview arrangement with a vendor so that he sent us the latest and most popular materials based on a profile that we selected with the option of returning any items we did not want.  We found that this particular vendor’s catalogs were always out of date because by the time he printed them, he had already given the best items to those who purchased on preview accounts.  It has become easier to obtain Russian Language materials, but staff still needs to think creatively as they deal with vendors in foreign languages.  Copyright issues can be tricky with AV materials and materials in some languages are still difficult to obtain.  Periodicals can be quite expensive due to international postage rates.  We have found Russian-speaking patrons are voracious readers and it is a challenge to keep up with the demand for new materials.

8. Give Them What They Ask For

The first request, in our first year, from our growing number of Russian-speaking patrons was for ESL classes.  They desperately wanted to learn English.  We started the program in a very small way, and it has also grown dramatically as I mentioned above.  Collaboration made all the difference in providing the program and in obtaining funding. 

We found that many people asked for information on the same topics and it became easier to provide translated programs on those topics rather than answer hundreds or thousands of individual questions.  We used staff from our partner agencies and volunteer experts as speakers and library staff translated the programs.   Over the years we have been able to provide information on an amazing variety of topics which were of interest to large numbers of our patrons. Some topics, especially those that deal with immigration or social service issues, will draw huge crowds and may have to be covered in a series of presentations.

A collaboration with the Russian Consul in San Francisco provided visiting Consul hours at the library.  These biannual visits give people a chance to do required paperwork and have allowed those who are still Russian citizens a chance to vote.

We try to be responsive to the requests of patrons for information and collections.  We also survey patrons to see if we can identify trends in requests and respond more pro-actively to the community.

9. Be a Bridge

If the question is in a foreign language and the only answer is in English your bilingual staff need to provide the bridge.  Your bilingual staff can help people access all sorts of information and assistance.  You can help people begin to make contact with service providers, with landlords and housing departments, with local governments and school districts, with social service agencies, and with medical help.  Be creative with time and effort as you make bridges and your patrons will be winners.  I think the main thing you will need in this area, as in any reference work, is the tenacity to stick with a question until you get the answer or the information the patron needs.

Some of our most exciting bridging efforts came in a city planning process when our staff could invite newcomers to participate in and give input to their own city government.  Staff participated on the planning committee, identified stakeholders, invited people and acted as translators at the meetings.  It was a great way for staff to be involved in a community event and valuable input was given to local government leaders from typically overlooked population groups.

10. Keep Learning and Be Proactive

Use your network of collaborators and contacts to learn about the newest trends and to keep aware of new population groups in your area.  Stay active, as the service provider world is in constant change and you will need to be very flexible to keep informed.  Ask questions and make visits and keep learning about any new arrivals to your community. Sign up for conferences about newly arriving populations and attend training about new cultures.  There are many new arrivals expected in the near future in Colorado, and the Denver metropolitan area - so some may be coming to your community.  It is always better to be prepared for the new language groups and interests of those new arrivals.  You can begin to find ESL materials and dictionaries in the new languages and begin to look for bilingual volunteers to help with communication.  You can begin to learn about the new culture and begin to work on reducing barriers to service.

Not everyone will understand your outreach and service issues and you will need to constantly explain what you are doing and why it matters in your community.   Keep open and active communication with your own administration.  When they see and hear about the exciting things beginning to happen they can be a support and advocate for your innovations.      

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.