Libraries DO Build Communities

I'm currently at the Public Library Association's 2008 Conference in Minneapolis. This morning, I attended two conference program sessions. First, Caught in the Middle: Immigration Controversy and Library Services and then Making Cities Stronger: Public Library Contributions to Economic Development. Both sessions were great and, surprisingly, I found some important common ground between the two programs.

Caught in the Middle focused on the difficulty that many libraries are experiencing in providing first-rate library services to immigrant communities due to the fact that there have been hundreds of pieces of local legislation across the country that essentially make it illegal to provide government services (i.e. public library service) to undocumented immigrants. Along with this sad story, the presenters underscored the real value libraries represent for new residents in our country as they try to make their way here..

Making Cities Stronger, on the other hand, focused on how public libraries contribute to the economic development of the communities they serve. One of the presenters explained that a shift is occurring wherein economic development is not viewed primarily in terms of traditional capital improvements in a community but is becoming more focused on quality of life improvements in the community. Obviously, this is an area where public libraries are well positioned to become more influential community organizations. The message was that libraries do a fantastic (though difficult to measure) job of building human and social capital; in turn, the community benefits from these outcomes.

Some examples of the indicators one might use to quantifiably measure the growth in human or social capital include tracking changes in the local unemployment rate (libraries are great at providing employment and career resources), tracking changes in local small business start-ups and government revenue growth through sales tax (most urban libraries have a small business collection), tracking changes in literacy rates (enough said), and tracking changes in high school graduation rates (anybody ever hear of the library homework center and tutoring services?). The real trick is to demonstrate the causality between the library's programs and positive changes in the aforementioned indicators. However, while it may be difficult, proving our positive impact on vital community-related statistics such as these is exactly what we have to do in order to increase our leverage with our governing boards and parent governments.

Now here is where I saw the overlap from the two sessions. The link between a strong public library, growth in human and social capital, and the community's economic development is well known. For this reason, libraries should be making certain that their policies related to access of materials and programs are geared specifically toward facilitating library use by immigrant communities. Why? We know that communities comprised of recently arrived and potentially undocumented immigrants often experience a much lower level of economic development than the larger community in which they live.

Enhancing library use in immigrant communities, then, is something libraries can do to fulfill their social mission of improving the overall community they serve. Of course, this shouldn't be a new or novel idea since libraries have long been champions of freedom to information; however, library policies intended specifically to facilitate library use by immigrants is vulnerable to criticism from members of the community opposed to immigrants' rights.

Because of the potential resistance from some sectors of the community and also because of the widespread distrust of government agencies (even libraries) on the part of immigrants, we have a difficult task. In addition to making certain that library policies related to access are friendly and non-restrictive for immigrants, education is a key component. And this educational effort is really two tasks in one. First, libraries need to work to gain the trust of the immigrants they serve so that these communities understand the benefits to be gained by becoming regular library users. Secondly, we need to be certain that anytime there is a challenge to our efforts of enhancing library use by immigrants, a significant piece of our response is related to educating those concerned people how they stand to benefit from regular library use by our immigrant communities.

Specifically, this educational message ought to be focused on how making a concerted effort at serving the immigrant communities actually will improve the overall community through, for example, lower unemployment, more new business, more local revenue generated, higher literacy rates, and higher high school graduation rates. And all of these lead to one thing: a more developed and more qualified workforce. Do local business owners understand the role that libraries play in workforce development? It's our responsibility to make sure that they do and that the link between serving the immigrant community specifically leads to a greater economic development for everyone.