Local Public Library Research Articles

Public Libraries: Your Partner in Increasing College Literacy Among Nontraditional Prospective Students

The Netflix docudrama, Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal, illustrates how college admissions, particularly at elite colleges, favors the privileged. Higher educational attainment overall favors the informed. Prospective students have many options when it comes to earning a college degree, with some of the more visible options (e.g. for-profit institutions) to degree attainment resulting in time and money wasted for nontraditional students. Thus, higher education professionals must educate prospective students on their options—sometimes at nontraditional locations. The local public library is one such uncommon, yet ideal location for reaching adult prospective students. Written from the perspective of a former higher education admission and advising professional now library science faculty, this article proposes that the reopening of public libraries post-quarantine is an opportune moment for colleges and universities to create partnerships to recruit adult students. Following a discussion of degree attainment among nontraditional students, barriers experienced, and public library services for adults, I offer four practical suggestions for higher education practitioners to collaborate with public libraries to broaden nontraditional, adult prospective students’ awareness of postsecondary opportunities.

Neuroscience Ambassadors: Creating a Network of Academia-CommunityPartnerships.

The field of neuroscience offers exciting, yet complex, insights into the human mind. In recent years, the need to improve the dialogue between neuroscientists and the public has been recognized, and an emphasis has been placed on the generation of public-based educational programs which reach outside the academic environment and into the community. One promising avenue includes the generation of mutually beneficial academia-community partnerships. These have the potential to allow faculty and students to acquire the necessary skills to become effective "neuroscience ambassadors", while delivering attractive, fun, informative and educational opportunities to the general public. The Department of Psychology/Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Minor at Saint Francis University (SFU) created a public-oriented, neuroscience-based network of educational programs with local public libraries, Girl and Cub scout troops, elementary schools, high schools, children museums and nursing homes, in rural Pennsylvania. We envisioned that the programs will serve to improve academia-community conversations and benefit students, faculty, community partners and the public alike. In this paper, the design, implementation, implications, limitations, and future directions of the project are discussed.

In Memoriam

In Memoriam Verlyn Flieger Priscilla Tolkien, 1929–2022 Priscilla Tolkien died on Monday, February 28, 2022. She was ninety-two years old and had lived most of her life in the bright spotlight of her father's work. She was ambassador at large to the myriad readers for whom she represented their most direct contact with his genius. In countless appearances at conferences and in interviews she shared her personal experiences of both the man and his work. In 1992 Priscilla and her older brother John published The Tolkien Family Album, a collection of family photographs with commentary, inviting Tolkien's readers into his and his family's domestic life. Only they could have done it, and the book remains the first and most genuine introduction to Tolkien as his family knew him. This essay will be a remembrance of Priscilla Tolkien as I knew her—a warm, witty, razor-sharp lady who carved out her own career independent of her father's fame, first as a social worker and probation officer, and then for many years as a teacher. I met her first in 1980 when, learning she was scheduled to give a talk at my local public library, I was emboldened to call the house where she was visiting and ask if she might be willing also to come and talk to my Tolkien class, at that time deep in The Lord of the Rings. She refused, politely but firmly, and I realized she must get such requests all too often. She did, however, take time to chat after her library talk, and so remembered me when I wrote a year later to say I was coming to England and would like to meet. That visit began a friendship that lasted forty years, during which time we both crossed and recrossed the Atlantic many times to visit one another. I treasure the memories. I remember her best in Oxford, pouring tea or serving dinner in her tiny but warmly welcoming house on Middle Way in Summertown. I remember its wall of windows facing the sun, its front room bookshelf overflowing with volumes of her father's works, the adjacent wall holding her mother's piano. I remember her beautiful garden behind the house, a long narrow space crammed with flowers but with a path to the blossoming apple (or was it crabapple?) tree, the statue of St. Joseph holding the baby Jesus. The sun seemed always to be shining. I remember walking with her down to South Parade, the beginning of the Summertown shopping district, and having her stop again and again to say hello to street people, vendors, buskers, panhandlers. They all knew her, and she knew them. Her hand was always reaching for her purse to find coins. I remember her visits to my home, wonderful, wide-ranging talks [End Page 3] around the dinner table on everything from problems of theology to the vagaries of social work. I remember the part she read in an Arthurian playlet I had written, the sultry, provocative Morgause whom she clearly enjoyed bringing to life. I remember the time she attended (incognito) a talk on Tolkien I gave at the Smithsonian in downtown Washington, and her amusement at the range of questions I was getting from the audience about the Tolkien family, especially at the one about "the daughter." In her later years, when travel became difficult, we talked often on the phone. It was when she didn't answer the last time I called, and my voice message went unreturned, that I knew something was wrong. I called Cathleen Blackburn, the Estate lawyer and her friend for many years, who told me the situation was grave. Thanks to Cathleen, I was able to send Priscilla a last message and to be assured that she got it before she died. She's a grand memory, one that I will always treasure—not because she was a Tolkien, but because she was Priscilla. ________ Tolkien Studies notes with sadness the passing of Edmund R. Meskys (1936–2021), who died on July 25, 2021, at the age of 85. Born in New York City of parents from Lithuania, Ed was educated...

Role of Libraries in Human Flourishing: Adolescents' Motivational Orientation for Occupation.

Introduction: Adolescence is crucial for human flourishing and strongly influences having meaning in life. We investigated the association between local public library density as a shared resource and motivational orientation toward their occupation in Japanese adolescents. Methods: A longitudinal study was conducted using data from a nationwide birth cohort survey in Japan (n = 12,184). At age 7, their caregivers answered questionnaires on children including the number of books read. Library density (low, moderate, or high) in each municipality was obtained from national statistics. At age 15, the adolescents indicated whether they had decided on an occupation and selected motivational orientations from among intrinsic (own ability and interest), extrinsic (high earnings, social class, or job stability), and altruistic (social contribution) orientations. Multilevel linear probability models were fitted, adjusting for confounders, including household socioeconomic status and city size. Results: Intrinsic, extrinsic, and altruistic motivations for desired occupation were reported by 40.7%, 31.9% and 41.8% of participants, respectively. Living in a municipality with a high library density at age 7 was associated with having intrinsic motivation at age 15 than low density by 3.1 percentage points (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.35, 5.85). The association was more prominent for those with lower income (P for interaction = 0.026). Neither extrinsic nor altruistic motivations were associated with library density (coefficient: −0.13; 95% CI: −2.81, 2.56; coefficient: 0.08; 95% CI: −2.72, 2.88 percentage points, respectively). Conclusions: Developing libraries in communities could encourage intrinsic motivation in adolescents, specifically for those in low-income households.

A trilingual Asian-American child’s encounters with conflicting selves in the figured worlds of a multicultural book club

ABSTRACT This study explores a Japanese-Korean-English trilingual Asian-American child’s identity negotiation in a multicultural book club. Drawing upon the conception of figured world (Holland et al. 1998. Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), it investigates how the book club as a space of authorship offers the 9-year-old girl of migrants opportunities to negotiate her multiple identities while responding to the books and interacting with the book club members. The weekly multicultural book club was held in a local public library for 34 weeks. The data included field notes of the book club sessions, transcripts of the book discussions, interviews with the child’s mother, and the child’s journal entries. The data were analysed on a weekly/monthly basis with interpretative approaches. The findings revealed that the child appreciated diversity and fortified her identity as an activist self who stood against social practice that marginalised people from different backgrounds. However, the identity was questioned and challenged by the book club members. The book club pushed her into a space where she encountered different perspectives and negotiated conflicting identities.

Evaluating mental illness-substance abuse stigmatic perceptions through education: A library-nursing initiative.

In this library-nursing initiative, the goal was to identify any changes in stigmatic perceptions among public library staff regarding mental health and substance abuse, post 3-day educational sessions. A total of n=37 library staff participated in this project and attended all three educational sessions and completed a pre- and postquestionnaire designed to address common mental health and substance abuse-related stigmatic perceptions among public library staff. Upon analysis of the pre- and postresponses, we identified that there were statistically significant changes in two perceptions, namely; "embarrassed to disclose mental illness" and "commonality of substance abuse" (p≤.05). Therefore, it is essential that behavioral health nurses engage and collaborate with local public libraries to educate and build a safe environment for vulnerable populations like those affected with mental illness and substance abuse in the community settings.

Charitable giving for cultural goods: Asymmetric gender responses to votes on tax increases

We examine the relationship between taxpayer support of cultural goods and charitable donations. Using a Dictator Game, subjects are paired with a real library as the recipient. Using outcomes from recent votes to increase property taxes to support local public libraries, we find a striking gender discrepancy. While slight reductions arise for both when the vote passes, female subjects increase their giving substantially in response to the ballot measure’s failure. This effect is driven by women donating all of their endowment more frequently.

Chemistry in the Public Library: A Long-Standing, Valuable Community Partnership

“Chemistry in the Public Library” is an outreach event that has fostered a continuing, long-standing partnership between The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington (a public, liberal arts college), the Olympia Timberland Regional Library (the local public library), and the community. It started as a National Chemistry Week event 15 years ago with the goal of providing equitable access to hands-on chemistry activities to schoolchildren and their families and has continued since then. The events were free of charge and registration was not required. Six to eight different hands-on science activities were prepared and presented at each event. Copies of publications, particularly those of the American Chemical Society, such as Celebrating Chemistry and the ChemMatters magazines were made available at no cost to the participants. They were popular, especially with parents of homeschooled children, who were keen to find resources that enhance their children’s exposure to the sciences. On average about 60 participants attended the event each year with the number increasing to about one hundred in some years. Undergraduate science students from The Evergreen State College served as volunteers for this event. They were trained to help participants conduct the activities and to explain the science behind each activity at a level that was accessible to the participants. Among other benefits described in the article, the volunteers developed leadership skills and built comradery, which carried over to their classrooms and personal college experiences. The advertisement of the Chemistry in the Public Library event, funding sources, the mostly commonly conducted activities, selection of activities to fit a particular theme each year, and the constraints when planning the activities are discussed in detail in the article. The impact of Chemistry in the Public Library event on all stakeholders that included participants, volunteers, The Evergreen State College, and the Olympia Timberland Regional library are also presented. The importance of bringing science to the community at a location that is easily accessible to them (the public library), which has shown to provide equitable and inclusive access to science for the community, is highlighted.

Social Work Digital Storytelling Project: Digital Literacy, Digital Storytelling, and the Makerspace

Purpose: The Social Work Digital Storytelling project was a research study undertaken to (1) enhance digital literacy of practitioners and students through digital storytelling training, (2) diversify engagement in a local public library technology hub (the “makerspace”), and (3) understand and enhance social work leadership knowledge among students and practitioners through the creation and sharing of leadership-focused digital stories. Method: Free hands-on digital storytelling workshops where social workers/students created stories about leadership exposed social workers to technologies accessible in the community and provided hands-on experience using hardware (e.g., IMac computers, digital cameras, portable data recorders, and a recording booth) and software (e.g., Adobe Photoshop, I-Movie, and GarageBand) as well as online social media platforms (e.g., Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook). Results: Before and after the workshops, participants completed a brief online qualitative self-evaluation survey through which they reflected on their skills, values, and beliefs about digital technology in practice. Participants gained knowledge of perspectives of online ethical tenants and exposure to Creative Commons Copyright and the NASW Technology Standards of Practice. Discussion: Prior to participation, the social workers reported fear and hesitancy using technology. After workshop completion, workers experienced a greater sense of confidence using digital technology as well as identifying organizational and systemic issues, which hindered field-based technological engagement.

A Comprehensive Guide to select a Suitable Journal for Research Publication

Selection of suitable Journal for publication of research findings in a peer-reviewed Journal is very critical and challenging for researchers. Selection of Journal for publication involves many factors, where the main factor is Journal metrics. In light of the proliferation of journals, some journals have come under increased scrutiny recently with terms such as questionable, illegitimate, dishonest, used to describe these journals. Generally, the young researchers or the first-time authors, would like to publish their findings in a less reputed Journal with very less rejection rate, as they want to publish their articles quickly. Wrong choice of journal for publishing spells outright rejection. Even if the article is very encouraging with sound and rigorous scholarly work, it will not stand the test. Another option for authors is to consult with librarians affiliated with organization or local public library. Librarians are well-suited to provide guidance in helping authors with selecting quality journals to consider for publication. Transparency and objectives are essential elements for scientific research and peer review process. Bibliographic software such as EndNote or RefWorks assist the authors to format reference section and to perform corrections suggested by reviewers. Hence, this review was delineated to provide an insight for the researchers to prefer a Journal based on the impact factor, H-index, SNIP, SJR and timeline of publication.

Re-Mixing Making: examining the Intersections of Hip Hop Culture, Maker Spaces, and Social Justice Education

Abstract Despite the potential to promote critical literacy formation, academic engagement and social justice education, maker activities and maker spaces do not always support or engage historically marginalized communities. This paper chronicles a response to this problem by examining a study created to support equitable engagement with youth in an after-school workshop series over 8-weeks that focused on Hip Hop cultural practices and the simultaneous development of critical literacy and social justice perspectives. The series, open to community youth was located in the makerspace of the local public library. Within this study, project designers drew from Gutierrez and Rogoff’s concept of “repertoires of practice” and focused particularly on questions of what counts as making, and who has agency to make these decisions and how engagement with hip hop culture mediates these understandings. I consider two instances where students engaged in Hip Hop- centered generative practices (particularly beat making and graffiti writing) and analyze moments of student resistance and agency as opportunities to expand understandings of development of critical media literacy and social justice orientation. This paper foregrounds the importance of iterative analysis and design as participants develop artistic, social, and political identities over the course of the workshop. Finally, this paper explores implications for classroom learning that emerged from the work, including expression, exploration, and collaboration.

Cultural policies mixing commonality and difference? The case of public libraries in French cities

ABSTRACT Libraries are a core element of local cultural policies. In a country historically marked by national integration policies aiming at cultural homogeneity, what is the relationship of local public libraries to the socio-cultural diversity of populations? The results of qualitative studies conducted in three major cities (Bordeaux, Rennes and Nantes) display a growing awareness of more diverse users and adaptations to their demands. Librarians, at the same time, do not give up the universalist ideals central to the history of their institutions and their current activities. Despite differences between cities, the case of public libraries illustrates the possibility to combine universalism and diversity in the policies implemented in France, here in the cultural field. My study demonstrates how local institutions can use their room for manoevre and combine elements of the republican ideal and adjustments to a diverse social reality.

Books for Idle Hours: Nineteenth-Century Publishing and the Rise of Summer Reading

Donna Harrington-Leuker, professor of English at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, has written a detailed, thoroughly researched overview of the development of summer reading as an American phenomenon, something that most of us simply take for granted today. Utilizing a wide variety of primary documents, including publishers' records, book reviews, diaries and correspondence of readers, and the popular novels of the period themselves, she demonstrates that the concept of “summer reading” was a consequence of the rise of the middle class in the nineteenth century, with the accompanying concepts of summer travel and summer leisure. Of particular note is her consideration of the educated African American elite and the summer resort communities that catered to their needs.The work illuminates the role of nineteenth-century periodicals in marketing summer reading to vacationers and, in particular, to female vacationers, presenting it as a “genteel performance” (41) taking place in a gendered space under the gaze of marriageable males. Harrington-Leuker also reveals the cultural work of the American summer novel, exploring individual authors and titles in depth. She clearly demonstrates how the early American summer novel, set in summer resorts and “ostensibly about summer leisure … became a narrative of self and society at a transitional moment in nineteenth-century culture.” This section is perhaps the least successful, as it requires a familiarity with those authors and titles and she admits herself that most of them have passed into obscurity, Louisa May Alcott being a notable exception. Her “blood-and-thunder tales” are presented as an example of the way that “the season's saturnalian possibilities … remained a part of the public discourse of summer.” Apparently, what happened at the summer resort stayed at the summer resort.Of particular interest to library historians will be the section on the role of space and place in American Victorian summer reading, including as it does descriptions of social and solitary summer reading, and the establishment of libraries at hotels and summer resorts. These include the Athenaeum library at Saratoga and the library at the Poland Spring resort in Maine. Other than a fascinating mention of guests at various resort communities hosting fundraisers for the local public library, there is no consideration of the public library and summer reading, although the public library does appear in many of the diaries and letters that she cites. Rounding out the volume is a chapter on the Chautauqua Assemblies, other summer schools, and the Catholic Reading Circles, which bear witness to the continuing tension between the desire for light, leisurely summer reading, and the cultural pressure for self and social improvement through reading “the best books.”The book is of interest to anyone interested in the social and cultural history of reading in the United States. It fills a gap in the current literature on print culture in nineteenth-century America in regard to popular fiction. While works such as Sarah Wadsworth's In the Company of Books: Literature and Its “Classes” in Nineteenth-Century America and Lawrence W. Levine's Highbrow Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America include popular fiction among the topics they explore, Harrington-Leuker's is the only work devoted specifically to popular fiction and to summer reading and to the role of the publisher in that phenomenon. It provides a background to works such as Joan Shelley Rubin's The Making of Middlebrow Culture, which focus on popular fiction, book club, and reading groups in the twentieth century. It also creates a need for additional works on summer reading in the nineteenth century that would approach it from different perspectives. Certainly there is room for additional work on African Americans and summer reading, as well as the previously mentioned public library and summer reading, and, of course, for the history of children and their summer reading beyond their participation in library summer reading programs.

Now I Am The Voice: "a journey of self-discovery through the eyes of a Thalassemic".

Now I Am The Voice: "a journey of self-discovery through the eyes of a Thalassemic".

The Community Workshop Series: A Case Study for Community-Engaged Learning in LIS

For over a decade, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) has offered some variation of the Community Workshop Series (CWS), a partnership to provide digital literacy and computer technology classes to community members at local public libraries. Both authors have served as coordinators of the program as library science graduate students at the UNC School of Information and Library Science. We situate this program within existing literature on digital and information literacy, community engagement, and the graduate student experience to show the utility of this program and similar programs for training graduate students, enhancing the graduate student experience, supporting the needs of community members, and bolstering the capacities of public libraries. The authors provide an overview of the program and encourage others to start similar programs. To this end, the authors present a case study of the CWS, including discussion of creating the program and keeping things going, and provide a how-to guide for creating your own. The authors identify four recommendations for creating a similar program to clearly delineate takeaways that might inform readers’ attempts to create similar programs, and they provide additional materials and documentation in appendices to support the creation of new community-engaged programs in LIS.

BADANIA NAD KRZYŻAMI I KAPLICZKAMI PRZYDROŻNYMI NA PODSTAWIE PRZEKAZÓW ŚWIADKÓW HISTORII

Between June and September 2018, one of the local public libraries in eastern Poland implemented a project documenting roadside crosses and chapels. Information on these small forms of sacral architecture were gathered thanks to the testimonies of witnesses. Next, a book containing photographs of the objects accompanied by brief descriptions based on the recollections of the founders and the representatives of the local community was published. Using the example of this project, this article presents selected problems related to local history using the accounts of witnesses. Both the benefits of these activities (activization of the local community, increasing interest in the past, and increasing social dialogue) as well as the possible dangers (abuses and the expropriation of accounts) were noted.

The Alert Collector: Game On to Game After: Sources for Video Game History

Kristen Nyitray began her immersion in video games with an Atari 2600 and ColecoVision console and checking out games from her local public library. Later in life, she had the opportunity to start building a video game studies collection in her professional career as an archivist and special collections librarian. While that project has since ended, you get the benefit of her expansive knowledge of video game sources in “Game On to Game After: Sources for Video Game History.” There is much in this column to help librarians wanting to support research in this important entertainment form. Ready player one?—Editor

The Public Library as Resistive Space in the Neoliberal City

With reduced hours, decaying infrastructure, and precariously positioned staff, local public libraries provide much needed services in cities devastated by inequality and slashed safety nets. In this article, I draw on ethnographic research of a small public library in a diverse, mostly working class neighborhood in Queens, New York. I show that in addition to providing an alternative to the capitalist market by distributing resources according to people's needs, the library serves as a moral underground space, where middle–class people bend rules to help struggling city residents. Although the library occasionally replicates hegemonic ideologies about immigrant assimilation, it provides a striking example of cross–class and interclass solidarities and resistance to the neoliberal social order. I conclude by discussing the potential of public libraries as everyday spaces of subversion and emancipation, as well as research sites for urban scholars.

Collecting Community Stories: Local Studies Collections and What They Can Tell You About the Community

Collecting Community Stories: Local Studies Collections and What They Can Tell You About the Community

‘Working Together’: Public Libraries Supporting Rural, Regional, and Remote Low-Socioeconomic Student Success in Partnership with Universities

ABSTRACTUniversity students living in rural, regional, and remote (RRR) areas of Australia face unique challenges including geographical isolation, lack of access to face-to-face support, and technological barriers. Additionally, RRR students from low-socioeconomic (low-SES) backgrounds experience multiple forms of disadvantage compared to their on-campus peers, and require additional study, learning, and social support. Partnerships between universities and local public libraries can enhance RRR low-SES student success through increased access to face-to-face support, reliable technologies, and study facilities. This exploratory research, led by five regional universities, presents the first national-level empirical data exploring how Australian public libraries and universities can work together to facilitate success for RRR low-SES students. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with public librarians from RRR low-SES communities across Australia. Thematic analysis findings explore themes of librarians’ perceptions of students as persons; the role of regional librarians in supporting RRR low-SES students; RRR low-SES students’ access to learning support; and the critical elements of sustainable partnerships between RRR public libraries and universities. Key recommendations are provided to guide future partnerships between public libraries and universities, including building the foundations of partnerships; professional development to support partnerships; and recommendations for good partnership practices.