School of Information Management & Systems.   Spring 2003.
285 Design of Library Services.   Michael Buckland.

Assignment 5: Serving Diverse Communities.   Due Feb 28.

Libraries exist to serve communities of people -- often a multiple differing communities at the same time -- and a large part of the challenge to make the service appropriate for a particular group. There are, of course, many different kinds of communities: by occupation, by location, by reading interest, by cultural heritage, by language, by age, and so on. There has been a steady flow, especially since the 1960s, of discussion, publication, and resources concerned with service to special groups.

Newspaper reports on the 2000 Census noted the increase in Hispanic / Latino / Chicano communities in California. Here are some English-language web-sites concerned with library services to the Spanish-speaking:

Reforma: National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking www.reforma.org
SOL Spanish in Our Libraries skipper.gseis.ucla.edu/students/bjensen/html/sol.htm
PLUS Public Libraries Using Spanish skipper.gseis.ucla.edu/students/bjensen/html/plus
Barahona Center for the Study of Books in Spanish for Children and Young Adults www.csusm.edu/csbs

In addition to the usual literature searching in Library Literature and Library and Information Science Abstracts, one way to locate groups concerned with service to special groups is to look at the American Library Association Roundtables, listed at www.ala.org/alaorg/rtables/rtables_home.html
e.g. Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT) lonestar.utsa.edu/jbarnett/emie.html [site under reconstruction 2/13/03] which provides a Resources and Links page lonestar.utsa.edu/jbarnett/emielinks.html and
the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table calvin.usc.edu/~trimmer/ala_hp.html
which has a A Selective Bibliography for Lesbian Readers and an (old) website on Classification Schemes for Lesbian/Gay Materials.

Also, scroll down the the list of associations affiliated with the American Library Association, listed at www.ala.org/alaorg/affiliates/affiliates_home.html and visit a few.
Examples include:
American Indian Library Association www.nativeculture.com/lisamitten/aila.html
Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association www.uic.edu/depts/lib/projects/resources/apala
Black Caucus of ALA www.bcala.org
Chinese-American Librarians Association www.cala-web.org

Assignment:
(a). Take a look at one or more of the sites on service to the Spanish-speaking – #1 above.
(b). Find some other sources on services to a special group (using #2 above if you wish); and
(c). Present a short report in class and on paper summarizing what you found.
Note that most of the organizations organize programs at the American Library Association Annual Meeting and some at the California Library Association Annual Meeting.