DCPL’s Adaptive Services Division (ASD), headed by Venetia Demson, is the D.C. community place for free access to inclusive reading formats and adaptive technologies that support literacy, education, and lifelong learning. The division provides a welcoming environment for the deaf community, the visually impaired, older adults, veterans, and injured service people through services that include a Talking Book and Braille library; adaptive technology lab and classes; sign language classes; cultural and informational programs; at-home reader service; and informal learning environments.

Several innovative literacy programs provided by ASD that I would like to highlight include DCPL’s Braille Book Club for Kids. The club meets monthly at the library and attracts blind children from the greater D.C. metropolitan area. Elementary school-age Braille readers and adult Braille mentors read aloud from Braille books in hard copy and refreshable Braille-display formats. Children improve their knowledge of the Braille code and learn to read aloud expressively. They also socialize and share stories with each other. This DCPL program is a partnership with the Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind.

DC VIP Teens is a weekly after-school program for blind and low-vision teens who attend D.C. public schools. Sessions focus on aspects of the Expanded Core Curriculum in which teens practice orientation and mobility skills by traveling from school to the library or assigned cultural venue each week. The teens socialize over pizza and converse about books with blind teens from Pittsfield (Mass.), in monthly virtual book club sessions. They use technology to access books and training materials on self-advocacy, transition, careers, and financial literacy. The teens take a field trip to a local university each semester to learn about accessing disability support services at the college level. They enjoy audio-described visits to the museums, theaters, concert halls, and national parks. The teens benefit from homework help through the library’s databases and a mentoring program led by a local university student Lions Club. DCPL’s partners include the Friends of the DCPL for the Blind, and six other local and national agencies that serve the blind.

Sensory Story Time with Micki Freeny is a monthly program for children age three to six that brings stories to kids with developmental disabilities who may not be comfortable in a regular library storytime. With a flannel board schedule and lots of visuals, children enjoy songs, stories, and movement in a welcoming environment. bring literacy-building opportunities to people with sensory and mobility disabilities through its permanent installation for people with disabilities, aptly called the AbleGamers Accessibility Arcade. Major equipment includes a:

• High-end gaming computer. This computer is the hub of the gaming library for people who are blind or have low vision. The computer allows gamers with disabilities to play PC-based games and Internet-based multiplayer games.
• Microsoft Xbox console system. The Xbox console gives gamers with mobility disabilities access to the most popular games through the state-of-theart Adroit Switchblade controller. This switch-enabled adapted controller can be operated by hand, with a head pointer, an arm-mounted chin switch, or programmable light-touch finger switches.
• Mobile Microsoft Xbox with Kinect. This system brings motioncontrolled gaming to library customers with mobility disabilities. Additionally, game makers are starting to imagine voice control into games, potentially adding another dimension of game control for gamers with disabilities.
• iPad. A mounted gaming iPad and a head pointer are offered for those that may need it. In order to support this first-in-thenation accessibility arcade, DCPL partnered with AbleGamers.com to create an online community for gamers with disabilities in the Washington, D.C., area to meet, plan, and discuss gaming with the staff of ASD, and the larger worldwide AbleGamers community.

As public libraries continue to explore ways to promote literacy as essential to success in education and employment, PLA will continue to showcase all types of literacy programming @ your library!

REFERENCE

1. National Center for Education Statistics, “National Assessment of Adult Literacy: State and County Estimates of Low Literacy,”  (accessed Jan.22, 2013). P

The post Innovative Literacy Programs first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Given that this monthís issue is all about digital literacy, I canít help but think about how my almost-two-year-old interacts with technology. At six months old, he showed me how to use the multi-touch gestures on my then-new iPad. If he sees a smartphone, he’ll hold it to his ear, say “hello?” and ask you to show him the photos. And thanks to the Kinect-aided voice controls, “Xbox” is now in his vocabulary.

None of this stuff seems new or magical to him. Decades of ingenuity and innovation are as mundane to him as a light switch is to us. However, just because the kiddo is a digital native doesnít mean he will automatically be digitally literate.

What does that entail, exactly? The nature of things in the hyperconnected, publish-on-the-go online environment requires an entirely new set of skills for extracting meaning from digital texts. How do you evaluate a reliable online source – whether it’s a published article, a blog post, an infographic, a YouTube video, or even a tweet? Being able to digest all of this in a critical fashion is all the more essential, whether youíre writing an essay for class or arguing with Uncle Steve on Facebook.

Equally important is using those same media to create your own content. The reduced costs of production and publication have made it easier than ever to get a message out to the world. Gaining a working knowledge of the tools of production is certainly valuable. The expansion of digital media labs and makerspaces in libraries is a testament to that. But how do you make sure that message has the desired impact? How do you know when audio is more effective than raw text? What situations are more appropriate for still images, and when is a video the right tool for the job? Being able to discern the proper medium for the message is another essential piece of the digital literacy puzzle.

But reading, interpreting, and creating digital media is only one part of the picture. There is an entire set of life skills that now hinges on a certain base knowledge of how the web works. Even seemingly insignificant things that we consider “intuitive” – knowing the difference between a pulldown menu, a check box, and a radio button, for exampleócan have a significant impact if you’re applying for a job or filling out your tax forms online. As organizations continue to push their content online as a means of reducing costs, the basic principles of getting around on any netconnected device cannot be taken for granted.

How Libraries Fit into the Digital Literacy Picture

Fantastic,” you’re saying. “So digital literacy skills comprise not only basic stuff like mouse skills and screen reading, but building comprehension skills across a variety of media, coupled with developing the abilities to create meaningful documents of our own?”

To which I would say “yep!” Though you might also want to include the ability to do so across a variety of devices. Things change whether you’re using a keyboard and mouse or a touchscreen. And you can’t rule out a working understanding of code, either. As I’ve mentioned in the past, we don’t have to become programmers, but knowing how the pieces fit together can help us better grasp how databases work with one another.

“Oh, that too?” you respond. “Doing all of that isn’t daunting at all.”

But that’s the point: Of course this stuff is daunting. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the all-consuming nature of digital literacy. But libraries are often the only places positioned to help people with these skills, especially very young children and adults out of school. It doesn’t necessarily mean we have to provide a full-blown learning program to every patron who comes into our library. But we can integrate more digital-skills training to patrons who make use of our existing services.

Regular storytimes can be supplemented with app-based learning programs, where kids get a chance to play with tablets and parents can be briefed on how technology can be made a part of the educational process.¹ We can offer classes on dealing with online forms and target them directly to job-seekers. And we can create pathfinders helping our patrons to ask the right questions as they perform their own research.

We can also lead by example, by creating strong content and providing appropriate context to the conversations taking place around us. The online tool Storify (www.storify.com) allows users to create narrative stories using material from multiple social media platforms, and is an incredibly useful tool for this purpose. Say your library asks a question on all your channels. “What’s important to your community?” for example. As responses (not to mention responses to those responses) come in, you can use Storify to gather the entire conversation in one place, showing how a larger narrative emerges, even if individual posts appear on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, or anywhere else. By using tools like this to tell stories, we’re not only making the aggregate of all this information more useful, but we’re also helping to cement the narrative of the library as an online community hub.

Help Is on the Way

Taking a piecemeal approach is one solution, but it will only get us so far. Best practices are beginning to emerge and a number of organizations are starting to form to help learners and educators alike get their heads wrapped around digital literacy concepts.

Connect2Compete is a new nonprofit geared toward bringing government institutions, community organizations, and private groups together to address digital literacy education. By providing access to computer hardware, low-cost Internet access, and digital skills training, the organization hopes to give the public better tools for crossing the digital divide. Its website features a directory of organizations (including libraries) that already feature technology classes, and they have recently announced a partnership with the FCC to expand Connect2Compete’s reach to job centers across the country. The federal government has also launched digitalliteracy.gov, an online clearinghouse for digital training resources. Targeting learners and educators alike, the site aims to provide links to all of the efforts currently taking place across the country.

Both of these groups already feature heavy public library involvement. But there’s also a need for library-specific resources, for both learners and instructors. Funded by an IMLS grant and working in conjunction with the Office of Technology Policy’s Digital Literacy Task Force³ and the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies, PLA is launching DigitalLearn.org, which aims to provide unique tools for both sides of the digital literacy equation.⁴

For practitioners, the site seeks to create a portal for curated digital literacy resources designed to impart specific skills to those looking to learn. The site aims to help users find the right tools through a simple set of questions – almost like a guided reference interview.

Rather than an extensive list of resources like what’s available at digitalliteracy.gov, PLA’s site will focus on providing a much more curated list of learning tools. Using responsive web design techniques, it will create a uniform learning experience for users, rather than sending them off to disparate external sites with their own layouts and navigational issues. In this way, the PLA site aims to practice what it preaches. For instructors, digitallearn.org seeks to build a larger repository of resources for digital literacy training. By trading ideas through this space, the project coordinators hope to build an ongoing community of practice targeting digital literacy in public libraries.

Let’s Get to Work

We still have a lot of work to do. More and more of the necessary skills to function in society – going to school, getting a job, paying one’s bills – require an increasingly sophisticated set of tools. Resources for libraries, educators, and practitioners are still coming together. It’s going to take a great deal of collaboration, experimentation, and input to make this happen. Now is the time to make our mark.

REFERENCES AND NOTES

1. A great example of this is Darien (Conn.) Library’s “Little Clickers” program, developed by librarian Gretchen Caserotti. See Caserotti, “Little Clickers: A Collaborative Pre-K Computer Class,” accessed Nov. 20, 2012.

The post Small Steps, Big Steps: Heeding the Call of Digital Literacy first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Library Strategies is a nonprofit consulting firm that is part of a library foundation for the Saint Paul (Minn.) Public Library (SPPL) (The Friends of SPPL). It was created six years ago in response to an increasing number of requests from other libraries about developing effective fundraising programs. Library Strategies’ consultants are individuals who are actively involved in a career in the library and library support world. The development of Library Strategies was an entrepreneurial venture on the part of our library foundation to assist other libraries and to also bring additional revenue into our library foundation in support of SPPL.

Creating a Culture of Fundraising

I’ve been staff president of The Friends of SPPL for the past twenty-one years. This nonprofit organization is both a library Friends group and a library foundation within one organization. Libraries are among the few institutions that can have two different organizations to support them. Whether you have just a Friends group, just a library foundation, both organizations operating separately, or both organizations merged as one, these columns will help your library do better fundraising. In fact,
it will help you create what we like to call “a culture of fundraising” for your library.

While many museums and arts organizations have been doing major fundraising or more than a hundred years, public libraries are relative newcomers to the world of major fundraising. Public libraries began creating library foundations only about twenty years ago. With this in mind, know that these columns will be written so that whatever your support organization’s structure, you will gain important tips and advice on developing a culture of fundraising at your own library.

Over the course of the next eight to ten columns, we will provide information and insights on many aspects of public library fundraising. Future columns will deal with topics such as the importance of individual fundraising and relationship development, the distinctions between membership and donors, the annual fund, grant writing, corporate sponsorships, special events, memorials as a way to build endowments, simple steps for a planned giving program, developing an effective fundraising board, capital campaigns, online giving and social media, the relationship between fundraising and advocacy, utilizing volunteers, and thanking and nurturing donors. Our goal is to provide you with the information you need to create a comprehensive library fundraising program.

What Fundraising Can and Can’t Do

In this column, we also hope to provide you with realistic information about library fundraising because everyone needs to go into fundraising with realistic expectations. Good news! Fundraising doesn’t have to be a dreaded word. It can be energizing. It can provide everyone in your library with added enthusiasm for what you do. After all, what could be more rewarding than providing extra funding for the institution that you love most in the world – your public library?

It’s important to remember, however, that private fundraising is not the answer to all your library’s fiscal challenges. Private funding can’t – and shouldn’t – take the place of stable public funding for basic library services and hours. That’s not the role that private donors want to play. They want their contributions to enhance your library services and programs. If you have lost a great deal of public funding in recent years, you may want to think about creating a grassroots political advocacy campaign before you create your foundation. Most fundraisers agree that it can take several years for a paid fundraising staff person to raise more money than his or her salary. So, starting slowly – with volunteers, then part-time staff, then fulltime staff – may make a lot of sense for organizations just beginning fundraising. And for those libraries that already have fundraising staff in place, we hope that our columns will provide timely and important information to expand or fine-tune your fundraising efforts.

Fundraising and Literacy

The theme for this issue of Public Libraries is literacy. There couldn’t be a better topic to launch a discussion of the appropriate role for private fundraising in public libraries than literacy. The possibilities for literacy programs in public libraries are endless, and they make excellent opportunities for the use of private funds. One of the most popular and well-known literacy programs that most libraries provide is the summer reading program. The summer reading program provides opportunities for children to keep their reading skills current so that they don’t lose ground over the summer months and can begin the new school year at the same reading level with which they ended the previous year. Most summer reading programs involve special programming to entertain children, as well as reading records and incentive prizes for reading a certain number of books during the summer. Since the summer reading program materials are distributed to most of the children in the community through the public schools, this makes an excellent opportunity to have corporate sponsorship of the program because corporate names and logos will be on the materials distributed to all the families in the community. There are also a number of foundations that have an interest in providing funding for summer activities for children through programs such as the summer reading program.

Adult literacy programs and services are also an important part of public library offerings. Often, programs that teach reading and basic skills to adults who have low literacy levels are located in public school buildings. But it’s not uncommon for adults who need this service to have negative feelings and experiences about public schools from earlier years. Because of that, providing adult literacy services in public libraries is a very nonthreatening way to reach adults who need literacy services but avoid school settings. Library adult literacy programs may be supported with contractual funding from the local public school district or volunteers of the local Literacy Council or private funding from community foundations and other education related local foundations. Partnering with a local adult literacy organization is a powerful way to develo a new allies and potential for additional funding. Library Strategies is currently working with the Minnesota Literacy Council in a joint project that provides training to literacy providers and library staff in small towns and rural areas in Minnesota.

The post A New Beginning first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

The task force defines a digitally literate person as someone who:

• possesses the variety of skills—technical and cognitive—required to find, understand, evaluate, create, and communicate digital information in a wide variety of formats;
• is able to use diverse technologies appropriately and effectively to retrieve information, interpret results, and judge the quality of that information;
• understands the relationship between technology, lifelong learning, personal privacy, and stewardship of information;
• uses these skills and the appropriate technology to communicate and collaborate with peers, colleagues, family, and on occasion, the general public, and
• uses these skills to actively participate in civic society and contribute to a vibrant, informed, and engaged community.²

Reading that definition describes exactly what a librarian working with teens is charged with every day—connecting teens with technology and making sure that teens are able to effectively utilize that technology for themselves and to connect with others.

Teen librarians have taken the idea of digital literacy and introduced it to teen audiences in creative ways through programming. I talked with two teen librarians, Kelly Jensen, associate librarian at Beloit (Wis.) Public Library, and Angie Manfredi, head of youth services, Los Alamos County (N.Mex.) Library System, who have implemented successful programs that have digital literacy as a goal.

Public Libraries: Can you explain the digital literacy program you ran at your library? How did you prepare for it and how was it promoted?

Kelly Jensen: I ran a QR code treasure hunt with Andrea Sowers at her library [Joliet (Ill.) Public Library]. Preparation involved designing a scavenger hunt with books located in the teen area of the library, the creation of videos for prompts (using authors to do so), and purchasing an iPod and putting a QR code on it. We also had to create our own QR codes as well.

Angie Manfredi: This year I decided to combine our most successful teen program, our teen lock-ins, with some digital literacy education tied into YALSA’s Teen Tech Week. Our teens are always interested in attending lock-ins, so this was a great chance for us to get good attendance numbers for a digital literacy program. To prepare for the program, I worked with our electronic services librarian to think of the resources and materials that would be the most appropriate to cover and used ideas from YALSA’s Teen Tech Week website.

PL: How did the program work?

KJ: To begin the QR Code Treasure Hunt, I had to make one large purchase: an iPod Touch. This cost roughly $200. I decided to purchase this because in my area, teens do not have much access to smartphones. It seemed unfair to me to expect anyone to participate in a program without the expensive equipment. Fortunately for me, I received a donation from a local organization, and the money went toward this purchase. Additionally, I decided that teens who completed the treasure hunt would have the opportunity to win big for participating. The iPod would be the prize. So, while this was a pricey start up, it ensured fair access to the equipment and served as a prize/incentive for participation.

When I got the iPod I loaded a free QR app onto it. I taught staff how to use the equipment by encouraging them to run through the hunt so they could answer questions that might arise. In addition, I made all of the books involved in the hunt non-circulating; this was done in the event one of our codes would check out. Fortunately, we’re part of a big enough system that kids interested in checking out these books would be able to get them in a day or two from another library.

There were only a few instructions for my hunt. The teens were given a small handout with problem-solving tips. They were allowed to borrow the iPod for the program with a library card or student ID. The first QR code led them to a video produced by one of Andrea’s teens that explained how the program worked. She also revealed their first clue. On the back of the book was the QR code. After snapping that clue, they were then led to their first author video, featuring young adult author Melissa Walker. Melissa’s clue took them to one of our reference desks. From there, they were led to a few other places around the library.

Our final clue was to the book Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. When kids snapped that code, they were led to a Google form to fill out and be entered for the grand prize.

AM: For our event, I created a bingo card featuring digital literacy activities. Each teen was given a bingo card and challenged to complete as many activities as possible during the lock-in. Several stations, with desktop and laptop computers, were set up around the library with library
staff on hand at each station prepared to help teens through any of the activities. Tasks included editing a Wiki page, looking up a favorite author on Twitter, testing the security of their passwords, using a library database to find out a ridiculous fact, filming a video booktalk, and playing with the code of a website using Hackasaurus.

PL: What were the program’s benefits?

KJ: The QR Code Treasure Hunt let teens learn a new piece of technology. For my rural teens, this was something they don’t get exposed to daily, and the opportunity to do so while having fun (I mean, they got to see videos from real authors!) made the learning part more enjoyable.

AM: This was such a wonderful program! It gave us a chance to really reach out to teens about digital and information literacy in a way that was interesting, relevant, and hands-on. Tying it to a successful program (our lock-ins) also gave the old program a whole new appeal. We not only had the opportunity to teach them new things about digital literacy but it was also a wonderful chance to share some of our library’s resources.  Another unexpected benefit was the chance to connect librarians from outside youth services with teens.

PL: Would you repeat this program?

KJ: I would do this program again in a heartbeat and I recommend something similar to other libraries looking for a way to incorporate technology and reading. As someone who’d never used a QR code, I thought this was such a cool introduction to the power they have, and it really encouraged me to think about how I could incorporate these things into my work.

AM: Absolutely, particularly in connection with [YALSA’s] Teen Tech Week.

PL: Why should teen librarians incorporate a focus on digital literacy in programming?

KJ: It’s important to give teens new experiences in safe environments, especially since not all teens are digitally savvy. I think the assumption is that if they’re young, they know technology. Not true.

AM: Our Teen Tech Week program really showed us the ways teens need digital literacy education—this is an area YA librarians are uniquely qualified to step up and take part in. Seeing our teen patrons “ooh!” and “ahh!” as they were also absorbing digital literacy lessons that will help them in every aspect of their life was a really great experience and it helped broaden what we think of when we think of library services to teens.

Librarians serving teens can help guide teens through the murky waters of technology and help them discover how it can be used in any setting.

REFERENCES

1. Marijke Visser, “Digital Literacy Definition,” ALA Connect, Sept. 14, 2012.
2. Ibid.

The post Teaching Teens About Digital Literacy Through Programming first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

People who are incarcerated come from our neighborhoods. They are not a homogeneous group. They don’t prefer certain kinds of books over others because of their inmate status. Most men and women who are in jails and prisons are not going to be locked up forever—95 percent of them will come back to the community.² It’s a diverse group made up of parents, children, sisters, grandfathers, friends, cousins, uncles, people you might like, and people you may not like. Many would rather be home with their kids than sitting in an early literacy program at the jail. Many would be patrons at your branch if not for their incarceration.

There are currently 2.24 million people incarcerated in state and federal prisons, and local jails, or 1 out of every 107 adults.³ And, 4.8 million more are under correctional supervision (parole or probation).⁴ This is a 500 percent increase over the last thirty years and belies our wholesale endorsement of the criminal justice system.⁵ We have voted for tough-on-crime lawmakers who promised mandatory minimum sentencing, a war on drugs, and three strikes laws. We okayed an unprecedented prison building boom and ancillary state corrections budgets. We voted away access to federal Pell grants for the growing prison population, causing most college degree bearing programs offered in prison to dry up overnight. Yet for all the attention and money we pay to the correctional system in this country, I feel we are in the dark about the actual human costs of this system. “What man knows 10,000 faces?” For that matter, what man knows 2.24 million?

The Need

Between 1995 and 2005 the female inmate population increased at a rate nearly twice that of men.⁶ Between 1991 and 2007 the number of children with a mother in prison has increased by 131 percent.⁷ On any given day, more than 1.7 million children in this country have a parent serving a sentence in a state or federal prison.⁸ This represents a small fraction of the minor population in the country, but as we all know, incarceration tends to favor certain neighborhoods over others. There are some neighborhoods in our city that have the unfavorable distinction of being dubbed “Million Dollar Blocks”—a handful of blocks in the city that supply a disproportionate amount of its residents to state correctional facilities, drawing millions of dollars in state tax money to do so.⁹ Parents are in short supply on these streets.

But where do we send kids’ parents when they go to prison? Our correctional facilities are by and large built on the outskirts oftowns, on islands, or in the country where no one lives for miles around. This physical displacement adds to the abstraction of the statistics. Upstate is the term we use in this city to refer to prison in general. It’s a term so nebulous it renders our imaginations useless in positing its whereabouts or its physical properties. When convicted, you simply “go upstate.” Upstate could be on a cloud, or it could be the cloud itself for all we know. Even so, these men, women, and their families are part of our communities and it’s our job to find them and offer them a book.

The Pitch

Prison library services fit hand in glove with the mission of every public library, and your library can extend its services to people in jails and prisons cheaply and effectively. The reason we come to work each day is to serve all of our residents, whether they live in homes near the branch,  or in cells at the jail on the outskirts of town. Striving to serve everyone lies at the heart of all we do at the public library. We have the unique opportunity and obligation to meet the needs of this large, and largely invisible, population.¹⁰

In 2010, The New York Public Library’s (NYPL) Correctional Services Program (CSP) received a small slice of a systemwide early literacy grant targeting fathers in New York City. Up to that point, CSP was concerned primarily with getting reading material to incarcerated New Yorkers through mobile libraries at the city jails. Programming was always on the backburner due to lack of funds and staff availability. Called “Daddy and Me at the Library” and funded by the New York State Education Department Family Literacy Library Services Program with $38,000, NYPL set a goal to get more fathers to attend the library’s early childhood programs. The desired result was that children would become better readers and be more likely to succeed in school. Couched in all of this was a push to get dads to develop better relationships with their kids in very simple, but meaningful ways.

Former colleague, and ardent CSP supporter, Leslie Ederer came to me to ask how she could help get books to mothers who were incarcerated on Rikers Island with their newborn babies. She approached me at a time when I just stepped into my role overseeing CSP, at a time when I still knew very little about jails and how libraries fit into them. Ederer told me not to think about jail populations and general populations as distinct from one another. Regarding the moms at the jail, Ederer told me, “Just think of them as parents.” This simple advice has guided just about everything I’ve done at the library since. I truly regret meeting Leslie so late in her career, and so early in mine.

Seeing an opportunity to expand programming at the jail, Ederer asked for a small amount of funds from the bigger Daddy and Me grant to be given to CSP. Through her efforts we received, not without anxiety, $3,800 to start a family literacy program. It sounds quaint now, but back then I had no idea how I was going to spend out what I perceived to be such a large amount of money.

For years I had a proposal in my back pocket for a book recording project for incarcerated fathers. I was waiting for the right time and circumstance to pitch it. Talking to dads about the importance of reading to kids sounded easy to me, and recording them reading a book seemed simple enough. I’m a dad and I assumed other fathers enjoy talking about their kids as much as I like talking about mine. That was the proposal in a nutshell. Keeping the plan simple allowed me to be able to start at the drop of a hat if an opportunity presented itself.¹¹

I pitched the idea to Ron Purvis, the newly installed and charismatic deputy of programs at the Eric M. Taylor Center (EMTC) on Rikers Island. I had been in the process of transforming our biweekly mobile library unit at EMTC (reaching just two housing areas) to a weekly 2,000 volume standing library open to all housing areas in the facility.¹² Purvis was interested in finding out what programs we could run out of the new library space.

We both agreed that an important link to successful community reentry is a strong family bond. Many incarcerated fathers have damaged relationships with their children because they are locked up and are not present in their children’s lives. A simple way to repair some of this damage, especially in young kids, is for these fathers to take an active role in their child’s literacy skills development. Simply put, these fathers could create stronger bonds by reading books to their kids. Working with a group of fathers, selected by Purvis, we would help them get comfortable reading with their children, dispel any stereotypes about how reading to kids is strictly a mother’s role, and lay a foundation for a lifelong love of reading and learning—for both parent and child.

I strongly emphasized that the Daddy and Me program would not cost the New York City Department of Corrections (DOC) a dime. Further, all the work developing and running the program would rest on our shoulders, not on the backs of DOC staff. I distilled the verbal proposal into easily digestible bullet points for Purvis to send up the chain for approval.

• The goal of the Daddy and Me program is to help strengthen parents’ relationships with their young children through reading, creating a first step to other positive parenting habits.
• NYPL will purchase a small digital audio recorder to record parents reading a book to their kids. This book could be a favorite of the child, or a book that the father selects with help from the librarian.
• Once recorded, these stories will be transferred to compact disc, labeled, and sent (with a new copy of the book) to the inmate’s children.
• Parents will be required to participate in librarian-led workshops on tips and strategies for reading to infants aged zero to five years.
• A children’s librarian will demonstrate how he reads board books/picture books to babies and toddlers.
• The librarian will discuss and display to parents appropriate titles and book formats for children aged zero to five.
• Fathers will have a chance to practice with the book before recording.
• Participants can sign up for library cards and they can also sign up their kids. New library cards will be sent by NYPL to the inmate’s family.
• When available, children’s book authors or illustrators will be invited to talk with parents about developing parent/child relationships through literature.
• Any privacy or media restrictions set by DOC will be strictly adhered to by NYPL.

I suggested to Purvis that he should schedule the classes any way he saw fit. We wanted to eliminate as much burden for DOC officers and other involved staff.

The Green Light

Four months passed without any follow up. Then one afternoon I received a call from the commissioner’s office. Could we start the book recording project in three week’s time? They would need a curriculum, a schedule of classes, and a list of technology we’d be using. We had none of these things. What we had were the bullet points, some money to buy a recorder, a stack of CD cases an Eagle Scout had donated, and an intern. I was already well into the process of looking for other ways to spend out the grant money. I had thought our ship had already sailed on the original Rikers proposal.

Yet I knew if we didn’t say yes to these terms, the project could be lost for good. A rule of thumb we use with the DOC (a rule I would never apply to life outside of jail) is that if we’re asked, we say we can do anything. After we say yes, we work like mad to figure out how to do it, often with very little time and no money. The reason is simple: Rarely does a door open at jail. Once a door does open, we kick it in and hold our ground. It’s a rather inelegant way of doing things, but it works.

To get the ball rolling I hired our Pratt Library School intern Sarah Ball as an hourly employee. She got to work designing our CD covers and inserts. We found a portable digital audio recorder that cost about $400; purchased a $20 dollar flash drive for audio storage; bought $80 worth of blank CDs and labels; and put in an order for $1,300 worth of children’s books for giveaways. These modest expenditures, plus $2,000 for Ball’s ongoing efforts, took care of our grant funds nicely.¹³

To design the curriculum we drew from what we already knew about early literacy training. While working at the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) as a trainee from 2006 to 2009, I cut my teeth on children’s programming. In no way did I want to be a children’s librarian, but because the library serves everyone, I took it as my job to lend a hand. Coming to work to a short-staffed branch, finding yourself suddenly knee deep in four-year-olds delivering a tone deaf Hokey Pokey while telling nannies to shut off their phones, is classic trial by fire program training common to many public library settings—one in which I found myself on more than one occasion. Although highly stressful, it’s a fairly efficient way to find out that we all can learn the basic skills necessary to sing, play, and read with kids. We might even like it after awhile.

At that time Every Child Ready to Read (ECRR) curricula drove much of the children’s programming at BPL and provided a platform for comprehensive staff training.¹⁴ This training model helped establish BPL as a leader in services for children and families, manifest in their innovative First 5 Years initiative.¹⁵ Ball and I envisioned guiding dads through the original ECRR six early literacy skills (Print Motivation, Vocabulary, Print Awareness, Letter Knowledge, Phonological Awareness, and Narrative Skills) to give them a heads-up on what their children were learning about reading and writing before actually knowing how to read and write. We wanted to teach them practical ways of feeding their kids’ hungry brains. In an effort to make the ECRR much more digestible for parents and caregivers, these six skills have since been streamlined into the Five Easy Practices in a second iteration of ECRR where Reading, Singing, Playing, Talking, and Writing are stressed. We incorporate both iterations in our Daddy and Me workshops as the six skills are embedded in these five simple practices that every parent can share with their kids.

Volunteers

Maureen McCoy and Stephanie Brueckel (librarians and former colleagues from BPL), along with Adrianna Mitchell (then a library trainee and incidentally my family’s current neighborhood librarian), all volunteered to help launch our first Daddy and Me cycle. We set up a total of four sessions at two hours each, spread out over a two-week time frame. The first three sessions were reserved for discussing the Five Easy Practices, demonstrating storytelling and finger play, showing how books can be read to children in different ways, offering advice on choosing appropriate books, and taking time to let the dads practice reading the books they chose for their kids. We read books out loud to the group, and we did the Itsy-Bitsy Spider. We also spent a lot of time talking about our kids and what good things we want for them.

The final session (now, sometimes the final two sessions depending on the facility’s schedule or how quickly we get through the workshop content) was reserved for recording the dads’ stories. Each participant recorded their story individually, away from the rest of the group—in as private an area as was possible inside the jail. Before pressing the record button we let the men know it was okay to make mistakes. In the workshops we tried to teach them to be comfortable reading out loud. We let them know that it was perfectly okay if they didn’t know how to read the words and encouraged them to make up stories based on the pictures if necessary. All this is okay because their children are not longing for a perfect rendition of Fox and Sox, but rather a few moments of their dad’s voice spoken just to them, mistakes and all.

Once everyone was recorded, we burned each recording onto a disc, made the labels, packaged the CDs up with any artwork or writing the dads wanted to include, and processed any library card applications we received. For all our Daddy and Me programs, the DOC hosts a Family Day where parents can hand the books and recordings directly to their children. For those who can’t make it in for Family Day, we send the package directly to their home.

I don’t think we could have made this program any simpler. Once you have access to an audience you bring your storytime, your early literacy workshop, your author visit, or your finger plays and songs into jail. We have made well over two hundred recordings since the first cycle. We have run this program at least once in all but two facilities in New York City for men, women, and adolescent parents. We have expanded the program to include men in an alternative to incarceration (ATI) program in Midtown Manhattan. Most importantly, we have conducted virtually all of our program cycles without any additional funding after the grant period ended.

It’s not possible for us to do this without volunteer support. Volunteers are crucial to the success of any library program. Any relevant work you can offer to a volunteer or intern gives them experience they can hopefully parlay into paying jobs down the line. That’s your hook to get them in the door. But the latent value of this experience is that your active mentorship will forge lifelong advocates for public libraries in the individuals who will eventually shape the role of our libraries in generations to come.

Hannah Mermelstein showed up in our office one day looking for an opportunity to volunteer. As great a listener as I have ever met, Hannah followed up everything I said with questions that prompted me to think a bit more critically about the way I describe the work. She was a student in the Queens School of Library and Information Studies when I met her in early 2010. She soon started volunteering once a week. Mermelstein split her time helping push book carts for adult inmates, building a small library for detained teens, answering inmate correspondence, and ordering books for the collection. Eventually we passed the reigns so she could manage several Daddy and Me cycles on her own.

I asked Mermelstein, now a school librarian in Brooklyn, to describe her experience working at Rikers Island. In her response, I find insight into the value of library work in jails, and also the value of good volunteers to library programs in general:

The first time I went to Rikers, I was struck by how much it looked like a school, which is perhaps saying something about our schools. But there were definitely more locked gates and security checkpoints than in a school. I do a lot of work with Palestinians in the West Bank, so I’m familiar with checkpoints, but this is a little different because I’ve never worked with the Israeli army to implement a program.

The guards and program officers at Rikers are also a little different than Israeli soldiers, most notably because the officers and prisoners at Rikers generally have more in common than Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians. So there’s a bit of individual humanity within an inhumane system. But there’s still a whole lot of yelling, a whole lot of violence. Not on the part of the prisoners, which at least some people suspect when they ask me if it’s scary to go to a prison. But on the part of the system as a whole.

So I try to let my presence be at least a small remedy to that. I don’t yell, I’m not violent, I try when possible in my interactions with people to pretend that the walls aren’t there, not to deny people’s experiences, but again to resist through normalcy. But there is sometimes a fine line between normalcy as a challenge to dehumanization and separation, and actually normalizing and thus accepting the system.

On the day-to-day, it means chatting with guys about favorite literature, or reminiscing about favorite children’s books, or giving teens the sexy books they want. Or a moment during the Mommy and Me program, which we did with mothers in the only women’s facility on Riker’s Island. The women were getting ready to have their pictures taken so we could put the image on the face of the audio CD the children would get with their mother’s voices. One woman was concerned about being photographed in her prison uniform, saying she didn’t want her child to see her like that. So I took off my sweater and offered it to her. Soon half the women in the room were passing my sweater to each other, which then took away any chance of individuality, but at least provided an opportunity for humanity. Now I’m not under any illusions about this. I’m not a savior and probably the women don’t even remember wearing my sweater. But it was a small thing I could do in the moment that I’m guessing was unusual and therefore maybe a little transgressive.¹⁶

It’s not easy to work in a jail. It’s not easy to compromise my values in order to open doors and gates, and it’s not easy to know that I can leave, whereas the people I’m working with cannot. It’s not easy to feel like it’s not easy, and then feel guilty about that, because I’m only there for a few hours, and voluntarily. This is something I’ve dealt with time and again in Palestine as well, so I’ve learned to accept that we all have reactions to whatever situations we face, and comparing or invalidating experiences is not particularly helpful.

With a lot of systems or organizations that I have a problem with, I ask myself whether I should work in the system or whether the only just thing to do is not to participate at all. In this case, even though I fundamentally disagree with the system, the people I am most directly working with are people who are involuntarily part of this system. This is what feels different to me, and what ultimately makes me find the work more worthwhile than problematic.¹⁷

What gives our democracy its special dignity and supports its legitimacy is that in order for it to work it must provide rights to everyone, even those on the outside of what is considered normal society. The moment we deny rights to certain people or groups, the moment we stop fighting tooth and nail for rights for people on the fringe, is the moment we become something else entirely. In public libraries we find a fairly straightforward expression of the democratic process. It’s our mission to welcome everyone to participate. It’s this inclusive mission that separates us from every other social service agency out there, and what drives much of the good will we’ve inherited over the years. We believe inmates deserve library services. If we didn’t, we’d be in a different business.

At the same time we also believe in the criminal justice system. A prison population spike that saw a 500 percent increase in just thirty years is a direct result of our political decisions in the voting booth. For a nation that counts for just 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its total prison population, surely we believe in the value of that system. Having subscribed so fully to its role in our society, it is logical for us to assume the obligation of being fully conscious of its collateral consequences.

This article describes the experience developing a family literacy program at a jail on Rikers Island in New York City. It is through this lens that we hope you become inspired to extend a hand to people in your community who may not have access to your services. This doesn’t have to be a story just about jails and prisons. As a general petition to fold meaningful outreach initiatives into your short- and long-term strategic plans, I encourage you to read between the lines and imagine employing similar efforts to reach other populations who may not have traditional access to your library: people with disabilities, people who are homeless, people in nursing homes, children in hospitals, or anyone else who can’t easily get to your library.

I have always found it a problematic, slightly patronizing stance to say that people in these groups are the ones who need the library the most. I don’t think it’s our job to pretend to know what is and what isn’t good for people. We are about access, but people don’t have to take our stuff if they don’t want to. Our great strength has been in offering people a choice. Implicit
in this is an option not to choose. Let’s make sure we have good things to offer. Let’s make sure we continue to let everyone make that choice.

REFERENCES AND NOTES

1. Albert Camus, The Plague, trans. Stuart Gilbert, First Vintage International ed. (New York: Vintage International, 1991), 38.
2. Timothy Hughes and Doris James Wilson, Reentry Trends in the United States (Washington, D.C.: US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance, 2002) (accessed Dec. 1, 2012).
3. Lauren E. Glaze and Erika Parks, Correctional Population in the United States, 2011 (Washington, D.C.: US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2012).
4. Ibid.
5. The Sentencing Project, (accessed Dec. 1, 2012). The Incarceration report is here (accessed Dec. 1, 2012).
6. Paige M. Harrison and Allen J. Beck, Prisoners in 2005 (Washington, D.C.: US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2006).  (accessed Dec. 1, 2012).
7. Lauren E. Glaze and Laura M. Maruschak, Parents in Prison and their Minor Children (Washington, D.C.: US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 2008), (accessed Dec. 1, 2012).
8. Ibid.
9. Justice Mapping Center, (accessed Dec. 1, 2012). For a description of “Million Dollar Blocks,” go to “NYC Analysis” found in the Project Gallery.
10. Every jail is unique and governed by its own particular logic. What we experience at Rikers Island may not translate exactly to your local jail experience. The New York City Department of Corrections (DOC) is big. It oversees ten jails on the Island, one barge, and a handful of other jails located throughout the boroughs. Red tape and bureaucratic snares may present themselves less in smaller systems. Yet the subtext that lies under every word in the following narrative is an uncompromising devotion to the holy trinity of Patience, Flexibility, and Persistence. Holding fast to these three virtues will serve you well no matter if your jail is in New York City or Hazard County.
11. Recording incarcerated parents reading to their kids is nothing new and I make no claims that this was an original idea. I encourage you to take our program and bend it to fit your own needs. The time, energy, and imagination you’ll exhaust to sustain and grow your project will brand it as your own.
12. The jailhouse book cart has an odd pseudo-nostalgic appeal—as if this is the way prison libraries have always worked, and our consciousness of them tells us they should always be run this way. Because most of us have never experienced a prison library firsthand, our expectations and consciousness of them may have been informed by the movies and TV we watch. It’s the Shawshank Redemption effect. The book cart has become just another narrative building block in our collective story of the prison “experience.” But in practice, book carts make terrible libraries and in many ways help to reinforce the punitive processes of jail life—everyone must stand in a line, only two inmates are allowed at the cart at a time, only a few minutes are given on the cart so we can keep things moving. Through the lens of the jail’s mission—to keep the inmate population and staff safe—this is a perfectly acceptable process. Yet the role the public library should play here is to demonstrate something totally different. It should be a demonstration of how a free society does its business. A sign post for civil society. For that, you need space.
13. The start-up funds for this project certainly helped, but by no means are they all necessary. The only real cost you need to be worried about if you want to replicate this program is the cost of the recorder. Certainly there are recorders that are less expensive. We had the funds, so we bought the one that was well reviewed at a lower- end price point. There are even cheaper recorders out there that could do the trick. For books, blank CDs, and other materials you could easily reach out to the community, local businesses, or religious organizations for support. We have not had an additional book or materials budget to support Daddy and Me cycles after the grant period ended. Still, we have continued to offer Daddy and Me programs once every one or two months. A budget for staff is nice, but years of budget fluctuations have taught all of us to creatively piece together services with a skeleton crew. Not fun, but by no means impossible.
14. Every Child Ready to Read, (accessed Dec. 1, 2012).
15. Brooklyn Public Library First 5 Years, (accessed Dec. 1, 2012). Offers helpful songs, stories, finger plays, and more to model programs on for your patrons or your own children.
16. I was on the 7 train one afternoon in February 2011 when a woman I didn’t recognize sat next to me and started talking. She asked me about my kids, the work at Rikers Island, how Hannah and Sarah were doing and other things. After several minutes I was utterly embarrassed that I still didn’t recognize this woman who seemed to know me so well. I was also too embarrassed at that point to own up to her that that I didn’t know. She ultimately realized this and let me off the hook. “I’m Renee, don’t you remember? Green Eggs and Ham?” Renee was the woman who wore Hannah’s sweater first, and she indeed remembered the gesture. Renee asked me to thank Hannah for making it possible for her children to not have to see their mother in a photograph wearing a green jail jumpsuit. My not being able to immediately recognize Renee is both a testament to my spotty memory, but also to the impersonal institutional effect of a jail-issue green jumpsuit.
17. Hannah Mermelstein, email correspondence with the author, Dec. 2, 2012.

The post Family Literacy on the Inside first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

According to the 2010 US Census, there are 50.5 million people of Hispanic origin in the United States compared to 35.3 million in 2000. Hispanics are the largest growing population in the United States with a 43 percent growth since 1990. According to Mexico’s 2000 Census, 53 percent of their population did not complete intermediate-level education. In 2010, the Pew Hispanic Center stated that 52 percent of Hispanics in the United States are high school dropouts compared to 25 percent of the native born. Among Hispanic dropouts, some 21 percent of the native born have a GED, compared with just 5 percent of the foreign born. Unemployment rates are higher and salaries are lower for those who do not have a high school diploma. Studies have shown that the development of a second language is dependent on the knowledge of the first language.

The Plaza Comunitarias Program was created in 2001 under the administration of Mexican President Vicente Fox and accepted in the United States through a Memorandum of Understanding between the Mexican and United States governments dated November 10, 2004. The Plazas Comunitarias serve as transitional programs into English and adult basic education classes as it establishes an academic foundation for Hispanic immigrants from which to work. There are four hundred Plaza Comunitarias programs in the United States.

In 2005, the Texas Library Association awarded the Richardson (Tex.) Public Library (RPL) a grant to send one of its staff members to Mexico to receive training in the Plazas Comunitarias Program. Plaza Comunitaria is a free curriculum in Spanish created by the Mexican National Institute of Adult Education (INEA) to help Hispanics learn to read and write in their native language and finish elementary- and intermediate-level education certified by the Mexican Department of Education.

The Mexican Consulate offices in Dallas became RPL’s liaison with the INEA. A work program agreement was signed in 2006 between INEA, the Mexican Consulate, and RPL. This agreement would give us access to INEA’s registration and testing online system known by its acronym SASACE. We also have access to all textbooks (print versions, online editions, and PDF files).

In 2006, RPL was granted $5,000 from the Texas Book Festival to purchase three computers and one printer for the Plaza Comu-nitaria. The library provided us with four additional computers in a former supervisor’s office that are connected to the City of Richardson’s computer network. Additional grants provided funding for ESL, citizenship, and GED materials. The library provides an annual budget of $5,000 that covers printing, supplies, instructional materials, and a dinner for the graduation ceremony.

In July 2006, the Plaza Comunitaria @ Richardson Public Library Program was inaugurated. Announcements were sent to Hispanic newspapers and radio stations, supermarkets, churches, schools, and public libraries all over the Dallas metropolitan area. We had planned to reach twenty-five adult learners but we inaugurated with sixty-three instead. We recruited and trained twelve Latino volunteer tutors who would work two hours per week in study groups. By the end of 2006, we had registered 110 adult learners. We now work with an average of two hundred students every year. All students must take diagnostic testing provided by SASACE to determine their course of study. Free copies of the books assigned to the students are printed and provided at the library’s expense. The library offers us three classroom spaces and a computer lab.

Like all adult literacy programs, some challenges were presented. As of 2011, we were working with an average of two hundred students per year with a 70 percent retention rate. Students come and go due to family and work problems. Lack of space and volunteer tutors to work with individual students also present a challenge. The curriculum can be overwhelming to many students. Basic literacy students––those learning to read and write as adults––take a considerable amount of time to learn. Because of their indigenous roots, many are learning a structured language for the first time. About half of the basic literacy students drop the program due to frustrations and low self-esteem. Our job is not only to teach, but to motivate. We motivate our students by organizing classes at their convenience, providing motivational speakers, and celebrating their triumphs.

Each book in the curriculum requires one to three months to complete and test except for basic literacy, which takes an average of a year to complete the first book. Both elementary- and –intermediate-level students are required to complete a total of twelve books to complete an educational level. All books in the curriculum are based on life and work skills and are written exclusively for adults.

We work with an average of fifteen volunteer tutors per year. Volunteer tutors are hard to retain because of the profound commitment tutoring requires. Recruitment and training of volunteer tutors is continuous. We visit professional and cultural associations to recruit tutors. Most of the tutors at this time are former students of the program. Tutors must be competent in any of the academic areas such as mathematics, Spanish, history, and science. To be effective, tutors must remain with their students for the duration of the book they study. They meet for three hours weekly for an average of twenty weeks except for the basic literacy students. The average stay of a volunteer tutor is one year but we have two volunteers that have been with us for six years and ten that have been with us for more than two years.

Volunteer tutor training is essential. Tutor training is directly connected to retention. INEA and local literacy organizations provide us with training. Individual training is also provided by the coordinator to all volunteer tutors. Lesson planning, educational resources, and teaching techniques are discussed during the training sessions. Volunteer tutors are presented with all types of challenges with adult learners because most of these adults do not possess study skills or read for pleasure. Some students are completely illiterate or are undereducated. Volunteer tutors must buy into the program to stay with it, which is why most of the tutors are former students who have received the services provided. The tutors feel the urge to pay it forward or to give to the community in a significant way. Tutors do change lives and these changes can be seen in their students.

One of our volunteer tutors, Josefina, finished her elementary, middle school and GED preparation course in Spanish with the Plaza Comunitaria Program and is now teaching basic literacy to illiterate Hispanics. Josefina was our Volunteer of the Year in 2012. She not only has changed her life but is determined to change the lives of others. Josefina does not drive so she walks from her home to the library. She has the patience and compassion of a saint and talks to everyone about how education has changed her view of the world and has given her hope for her future and her children.

Partnerships are essential to the success of the program. In September 2009, the Plaza Comunitaria program partnered with the Richardson Independent School District After-School Program, which provides us with two paid teachers who work with a group of twenty intermediate-level students once a week for three hours at a school facility. Ninety-two percent of these adult learners continued the program and the rest were replaced with new students. They took their subject tests and passed them. Another partner is the Richardson Adult Literacy Center, a non-profit organization that has worked with the library for more than fifteen years providing ESL instruction. ESL is taught in six levels with average groups of fifteen students at a school facility. The space required for classroom purposes would be impossible to provide without the help of the school districts.

The Plaza Comunitaria @ Richardson Public Library offers other types of courses besides the essential basic literacy, pre-GED, and GED preparation courses for the Hispanic population. The program also offers workshops and seminars during the year that cover computer, financial, health, and civic literacy. Seminars have been offered on self-esteem, domestic violence, positive thinking, and college readiness. We have taken adult learners to field trips, author lectures, and museums. One of the lectures we attended was by author Isabel Allende. It was important for the students to listen to a Hispanic writer speak in English. Even though Allende has lived in the United States for many years, she still has a Hispanic accent. The students were very pleased to hear her and understand that they do not have to speak English like their children to be understood. Many Hispanics are leery of speaking with an accent and many are reticent to speak at all, even when they know the language. Students also visited the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas to listen to the audio tour in English. We met later to discuss the highlights of the tour. Many students had never heard an author or visited a museum before.

Our citizenship and Teaching of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) classes are open to all nationalities. The volunteer instructor for the citizenship class is trained by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. The volunteer instructor for the TOEFL class is a certified ESL instructor. During the summer we offer a Spanish as a Second Language “Conversaciones @ the Library” course to non-Spanish speakers.

At city hall, during the month of January, the library celebrates a formal graduation ceremony for all students who have completed elementary, intermediate, and GED educational levels during the previous year. We provide diplomas, a special guest speaker, dinner, and entertainment. The library also provides the graduation gowns. The pride and joy of our 231 graduates since 2007 is priceless. Families join the graduates in this ceremony to celebrate the hard work and sacrifices of their family members.

The coordinator is a library staff member who is also a supervisor of technical services at the library, so the job requires excellent time management skills. It is the responsibility of the coordinator to interview, register, and test all adult learners as well as recruit and train all volunteer tutors. The coordinator also models teaching techniques during the first couple of classes. The coordinator attends literacy conferences with a selected number of volunteer tutors and then meets with all tutors to discuss the highlights of the training. During the meetings with the volunteer tutors, supplementary materials and the use of websites are discussed. We established four months out of the year (April, May, October, November) for registration and placement testing of new students. Intermediate-level students are tested twice a semester, while elementary-level students are tested once per semester. Each semester is twenty weeks long, leaving two months (June and December) for volunteer tutors and the coordinator to take vacation from the program.

In 2011–12, the library went through the ProLiteracy America accreditation process. The Plaza Comunitaria @ Richardson Public Library is officially a nationally accredited volunteer-based adult literacy program. Accreditation indicates that the library follows the national standards for adult literacy. ProLiteracy America provides discounts for literacy materials, training, advocacy, and a national literacy directory for public use.

Coordinating the Plaza Comunitaria program is very hard work. It is a challenge but very rewarding. There is a tremendous need for adult literacy programs in general and the need in the Hispanic community continues to grow. With library staff and budgets shrinking, many libraries would think that this type of commitment is not possible. However, the success of the adult literacy programs at RPL indicate that they can be cost-effective and efficiently run if the library is committed to serving its community where it really needs help.

The responsibilities of public libraries have changed in the last few decades. Library users today require that lifelong education be taken seriously and that public libraries offer more than book clubs, storytimes, and computer classes. Today’s public libraries are community centers that provide access to knowledge, education, and entertainment. Public libraries are the lifeline to lifelong readers and we need to start by creating these readers.

Adult literacy changes the lives of the undereducated; makes them better citizens and workers; and allows them to be role models to their children and their community.

Public libraries are the perfect place to provide adult literacy classes because libraries have the space and resources necessary, are accessible, centrally located, have service-oriented operating hours, and have friendly and approachable staff. More importantly literacy is part of the library’s mission.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jack Cassidy et al., “A Learner-Centered Family Literacy Project for Latino Parents And Caregivers,” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 47, no. 6 (March 2004): 478–88.

James Cummins, Schooling and Language Minority Students: A Theoretical Framework (Los Angeles: California State University, 1981).

Nadine Dutcher, Expanding Educational Opportunity in Linguistically Diverse Societies (Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics, 2002).

Richard Fry, “Hispanics, High School Dropouts and the GED,” PewResearch Hispanic Center, accessed Feb. 1, 2013.

Eugene E. Garcia, Effective Schooling for Language Minority Students (Washington, D.C.: National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education, 1987).

Ana G. Huerta-Macias, “Meeting the Challenge of Adult Education: A Bilingual Approach to Literacy and Career Development,” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Education 47, no. 3 (Nov. 2003): 218–28.

Stephen D. Krashen, Bilingual Education and Second Language Acquisition Theory (Los Angeles: University of California, 1984).

Lisa Krolak, The Role of Libraries in the Creation of Literate Environments (Hamburg, Germany: UNESCO Institute for Education, 2005).

Sylvia Cobos Lieshoff, “Working with Latino Families: Challenges Faced by Educators and Civic Readers,” Adult Basic Education and Literacy Journal, 1, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 133–44.

México, Instituto Nacional para la Educación de Adultos, Relación entre el Aprendizaje de la Lectura, Escritura y Cálculo Básico en Español, y el Dominio del Inglés como Segundo Idioma (Investigación en Adultos Mexicanos Residentes en EUA, 2002).

México. Instituto Nacional para la Educación de Adultos, Normas y Procedimientos de Inscripción, Acreditación y Certificación de Educación para Jóvenes y Adultos de Comunidades Mexicanas en el Exterior, 2006.

Mexico, Censo de Población, 2010.

US Census Bureau, The Hispanic Population: 2010 (C2010BR-04, 2011).

The post Plaza Comunitaria Literacy Programming @ the Library first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

This article explores the impact library literacy programs have in the development of immigrant community engagement. Literacy programs are free, learner-centered library services that are essential to the social, cultural, and economic development of rapidly expanding ethnic communities. Through their literacy services, libraries play an important role in reaching and expanding membership of new Americans.

Library-based literacy programs are an integral part of the mission of library services. These services contribute to the building of immigrant community engagement in their cities and neighborhoods where they live. Public libraries are literacy hubs radiating into diverse communities through their literacy programs, enriching a global village and engaging new citizens in the social, economic, and political activities of their communities.

As a government institution with a strong commitment to free access of information, libraries have been able to continue to provide library services, including literacy services to adult learners and their families. Due to extensive budget cuts, these educational gains are being threatened. As in the 1980s, “save our library” has become a recurring call in many communities. How important are libraries in building a community’s knowledge through its collection and through literacy programs? In this article, the importance of library and community partnerships will be explored with descriptions of successful urban literacy program models in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. The importance of library literacy programs will be emphasized. These programs are a key component of the twenty-first century library mission and an element of its survival. The important role of the state library as a partner in stimulating growth and innovation among the regional public library sector is another major component.

Libraries, Literacy, and the New Immigrant

In 1984, the California State Library’s California Literacy Campaign (CLC) under State Librarian Gary Strong provided the initial library literacy grant to twenty seven public libraries. Two years later, five literacy programs formed the Bay Area Literacy Network (BALit). In 1985, the Southern California Library Literacy Network (SCLLN) was organized. Today, there are more than 100 library literacy programs in California serving over 100,000 participants, both adults and children.² In FY2011–12, this funding was eliminated by California Governor Brown. In 2012, the California legislature reinstated $4.7 million in library funding with the majority of funds provided for library literacy programs. At the urging of the California Library Association (CLA) and the passing of Governor Brown’s Tax Initiative (Proposition 30), the governor released his 2013-14 budget with 4.7 million for continued library funding. According to Mike Dillon, CLA lobbyist, “the budget spares public libraries from any further reduction.”³

In California, nearly a quarter of California’s adult population (23 percent) lacks prose literacy skills. In the counties of Alameda and Santa Clara the low literacy skills reach 19 and 16 percent respectively.⁴ Bay Area cities are ethnically diverse with the minority becoming the majority. In the city of Fremont in Southern Alameda County, Asians are the majority at 50.3 percent of the city’s population of more than 214,000 residents.⁵ A decade ago, Asians made up 37 percent while the white population has decreased from 47.7 to 32.8 percent in the last ten years.⁶

The emerging trend is evident. New immigrants will become a majority in many cities in California, and the library has a role in welcoming new Americans and integrating them into the community.⁷

In 2008, Neal Peirce of the Washington Post wrote that libraries “can be the fulcrum of renewal in cities and neighborhoods.”⁸ Libraries continue their historic responsibility to provide free early literacy to young people, conversation classes to immigrants, computer skills to job seekers, access to the Internet and library databases, workforce development, and networking for the unemployed and for entrepreneurs. According to Jonathan Bowles, director for the Center for Urban Future, “many of the needs of the immigrant entrepreneurs also overlap the traditional forms of public library service, namely language and literacy skills, which may not be the stuff of headlines, but are absolutely essential roles in smoothing the path for immigrant entrepreneurs.”⁹

Libraries create connections to local institutions and build English language skills for immigrants and native speakers. An Urban Library Council report situates libraries as important community centers for connecting adult learners and their families through their collections and classes, including adult English instruction, early and family literacy and school readiness programs.¹⁰ Libraries contribute to the future of communities by supporting “successful immigrant transitions and help communities deal effectively with the effects of rapid worldwide change.”¹¹ Libraries and their literacy programs not only can respond to rapid worldwide change, but can also be the agents for the information that stimulates that change. Libraries provide users with free access to information that supports a social constructivist paradigm that builds as much as it promotes critical reflection in learners.

Library literacy programs are constructing ways to reach learners and build civic engagement in a global community. As recipients of a socially constructed set of codes or language, we are constantly embarking on critical reflection of our learning, not just what is learned, but how and for what purpose we learn.¹² The vessel for social knowledge is embedded in historical and social forces that emerge over time. Many library literacy programs are building learning communities through small group instruction in non-formal and informal settings that are primarily functional and practical, but also empowering and reciprocal because learners teach each other as much as a teacher teaches them. Mutual learning is encouraged whether in a learning pair or in a small group. Other literacy programs direct their efforts to learning pairs where the act of learning is not always relegated to the students or the library user, but to the tutor or librarian in order to help advance the learner’s educational goals. The role of the learner and teacher is a two-way street. Literacy becomes a vehicle for the creation of shared knowledge.

Creating Learner’s Own History through Dialogue

In a 2009 article on the definition of literacy, Daphne Ntiri provides a functional view of literacy that is more in tune with the expectations of the workplace, but also tied to power relations among those who have and those who do not have wealth. She writes, “Literacy has undergone a shift from the traditional, non-engaging paradigm to an open, dialogic approach that is politically energized and possess transformative qualities to enhance understanding of the demands of a changing world.”¹³ A dialogic approach is the interaction among participants in a conversation or dialogue whereby all those engaged act as arcs of knowledge that together build a larger knowledge base. This dialogic approach can be traced to the work of Russian philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. Dialogism describes the relationship that each utterance has with the previous and forthcoming utterances. A book, or a text, is not alone nor does it provide meaning without the intervention of outside dialogues, texts, or voices that intersect it. Martin Nystrand stated, “discourse is dialogic . . .
because it is continually structured by tension, even conflict, between the conversants, between self and other, as one voice “refracts” another.”¹⁴

Discourse is aided by each participant’s history, social role, and context. In a library-based conversation group or book club, the participants provide a window to the text, and their discussion is dialogic, and treated as “thinking devices” and not just as a means to transmit facts.¹⁵ Each participant’s active involvement enhances the thinking of others and of themselves.

Nystrand refers to this exchange as reciprocal teaching, which is a process that is both dialogical and sustained by its focus on experiences relevant to the learners, and on a deeper reflection of the literature—whether in the form of a book in an English conversation group, an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) discussion about American idioms, or while preparing for an interview in a job-seeking class.

As opposed to monologism, learning is enhanced by the interaction of those involved, as in a community of practitioners where participant’s thoughts and responses are taken into account and respected. Dialogue is chained by the meanings carried from one voice to another. As learners construct their own views of what they read in conversation groups or ESOL classes, they contribute to each other’s analysis by their dialogic interaction.

Library literacy programs surveyed promoted this web of “interpretative complexity” in their learning activities, in particular, their small group learning.¹⁶ In their learner-centered approach, literacy programs are powerful contributors and change agents when learners discover they are thinkers and creators of their own history and of the shared history of their community of learners.

Literacy aims at rectifying the historical and cultural oppression people endure, and at transforming the spirit of learners in order to break through political and social injustice.¹⁷ Libraries are no strangers to freedom of information and the ideals of a democratic distribution of knowledge to anyone who walks through the doors.

Building the Global Village through Conversations

The 2008 Urban Libraries Council report, “Welcome Stranger: Public Libraries Build The Global Village,” proposes five strategies for success that can assist in bridging the change experienced by many immigrants adjusting to global migration in the United States. The report places America’s urban libraries at the forefront in building immigrant communities by the library’s accessible information and institutional networks, understanding of local immigrant dynamics, sensitivity to cultural and language differences, building English proficiency, as a bridge to other local institutions, and in the ability to encourage civic engagement.¹⁸ According to the Asian American Justice Center 2007 report, “a growing number of immigrants—especially from Mexico, Latin America, and parts of Southeast Asia—are not only [persons with] Limited English Proficiency (LEP) but also have low levels of formal education and limited literacy skills in their primary languages.”¹⁹ The Alameda County (Calif.) Library literacy program has learners from Afghanistan with the same low levels of native language skills because of decades of war in their country.

Immigrant community development is enhanced by the librarian’s knowledge of immigrant demographics. The potential for public libraries to organize its services to make the information more accessible to community groups can result in a clearer understanding of the issues affecting immigrants.²⁰

The inclusion of literacy programs as a core library service has a significant effect in the rapid transition of immigrants into their communities. In the next section, a series of interviews with library literacy managers provides a picture of the impact their programs have in their service areas.

Helping Learners Become Active Citizens

The five literacy programs represented in this section provided services from 180 to 350 learners in their respective jurisdiction for a total of about 1,300 learners for all five programs. Two programs have literacy services countywide, while three have services in large urban cities. These programs cover areas with a population ranging from 250,000 to over 500,000 ethnically diverse residents. The number of staff averages from three to seven people with full- and part-time workers, including contract teachers. All programs rely on volunteer tutors and outside library funding to operate their tutoring activities. The California Library Literacy Services funds adult basic education tutoring for all programs, with the majority of expenses paid by their local or county libraries. At each program, literacy services are held in multiple locations.

Learners served by these literacy programs include native English speakers, second-language learners, inmates, reentry learners, homeless, families, children and youth, unemployed, people with learning disabilities, residential recovery clients, apartment residents, older adults, library and non-library users, government workers, private industry, and nonprofit employees. In all programs surveyed, library directors supported literacy program expenses and in some cases proactively advocated for library literacy as part of the mission of their library system. One library director was fully supportive of one of the literacy programs, yet, the library staff viewed literacy as inessential to the core services of the library. In light of severe budget cuts, and the unforeseen staffing costs of a newly built library, literacy was not viewed as a library service even though nearly two hundred learners and library users benefited from the service with reading, writing, and work-related instruction.

Library politics and the actual adult basic education program can be at odds. When asked why the literacy manager liked her job, she responded, “I wanted to be a part of direct service, to develop policy and curriculum, to improve adult education in the United States. This position has allowed me to do that.”

Another literacy program director manages a program in a large urban city with approximately 160,000 adults functioning at the lowest literacy levels. According to this literacy manager, 35 percent of the population in her city can be considered to have limited English proficiency. This literacy manager supervises a program for 350 adult learners in basic literacy, ESL classes, workforce-specific instruction, voting, computer labs, and a partnership with the library’s family learning centers at branch locations. The literacy manager predicts that the future of her program lies in a partnership with the library’s Family Learning Centers. Recently, their local adult school budget was cut by 70 percent from $5 million to $1 million.

Managers are aware that many learners from adult schools are seeking services at the library, as well as laid-off workers from business and factory closures. Learners are seeking all levels of ESOL classes and basic education at libraries. Because of budget limitations, literacy programs cannot increase the number of classes or tutors. The literacy staff is not able to maintain program growth demanded by library customers without additional funding for classes, tutor training and promotion, and without the support of library administration.

Tutor recruitment and training was in every literacy manager’s mind. They made a constant effort to encourage outside and peer volunteers to get involved, to advocate for the program, to speak at public representatives’ meetings, and to commit to staying long enough to meet participants’ learning goals. Managers were inspired by the involvement of learners in leading a conversation group, attending a leadership workshop, in peer tutoring, by their involvement in a learner advisory board, and participating in a voting workshop. These activities are seen as essential in encouraging civic involvement among literacy learners, particularly immigrants. Program services were marketed to local immigrant agencies and community groups.

The level of satisfaction was very high among literacy managers because, in the words of a manager, “I can see a permanent impact on people, literacy provides learners with something they never lose, that cannot be taken away.” Another manager said, “I am able to help people. I am engaged on a daily basis with everyone in my program. I go to the community to show the positive things that we do.” The positive outlook by these library staff members were shadowed by the general feeling that libraries relegated literacy at the margins, and not central to the library’s community service mission.

The federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) has funded several innovative projects that have taken the library out of the building and into the community. With LSTA funding, one literacy program has established four free computer labs, and a job-seeking class at three apartment complexes where learners’ interests are combined with reading and writing skills practice. Residents and neighbors can attend any class and learn about how to complete online applications, write a résumé, prepare for an interview, send and receive email, do Internet searches, find online library resources, search the library catalogue and place holds on books, and arrange a delivery through the bookmobile. The same program has expanded its Reading Clubs for second language learners where they read and discuss high-interest literature.

Library literacy programs face a myriad of challenges from budget cuts, to politically charged organizational cultures, to labor union influence, to government procedures and policies, and to programmatic issues such as learner persistence and volunteer recruitment efforts. Nevertheless, several programs have found a balance in program development and service delivery that have increased the learner’s capacity to succeed either in job seeking skills, English proficiency or confidence in everyday life dialogue. Library literacy programs are sites where emerging promising practices can be found in a learner-centered adult education that both inspires and encourages personal advancement and civic participation.

Library literacy programs are able to provide diverse modalities of instruction that work for the learners, at a time that is convenient for learners and with an open-door policy. These literacy programs are integrating ESOL or Adult Basic Education (ABE) instruction with life skills, computer training, job-seeking soft skills, and library usage in a focused contextualized learning environment that is safe and learner-centered.

Libraries are becoming more than just buildings and books. A distributive library is one that encompasses communities without borders, reaching out to learners––including new immigrants. But are public libraries missing the point and avoiding a dialogic process within their institutions by ignoring how important literacy has become as a key element of their strategic planning?

Literacy’s Role in the Future of Public Libraries

Library-based adult literacy programs are major contributors in the education of adult learners in urban, suburban, and rural communities. These programs provide free individual and group instruction during the current economic recession. Many literacy programs are replacing classes offered by adult schools due to budget cuts. The California Library Association lobbied for library funds with literacy as the main banner. The strategy succeeded in releasing funds for California libraries. Library literacy reaches out to an increasing number of immigrants who want to learn English to attain their personal goals.

According to the Asian American Justice Center, there are approximately 4 million LEP adults who are native born. This figure doubled between 2000 and 2005 and “is increasing at a higher rate than is the immigrant population.”²¹ Immigrant populations are more dispersed, and their English proficiency challenges have encouraged new strategies for effective instruction of learners. Some of these encouraging practices include a focus on life-skills instruction, an integration of English language proficiency with job training or GED classes, class schedules that fit the learner’s availability, well-trained teachers and an increase in collaboration and partnership with other community organizations. The literacy programs in this article use many of these strategies and are successfully attaining learners’ goals.

The public library is a little explored informal educational organization where adult literacy services continue to be provided for free and to everyone. It is one of the few remaining government institutions that have consistently stood by its ideals of free information for the masses and by its commitment against the failure to read well. But for how long? Can libraries fail to read well into their future and eliminate literacy as part of their mission of public service? Or can libraries expand their role in community social and economic development and see the role of literacy and education as essential to library members, to civic engagement, and the public good?

REFERENCES

1. Philip Martin and Elizabeth Midley, Population Bulletin Update: Immigration in America 2010 (Washington, D.C.: Population Reference Bureau, 2010).
2. California Library Literacy Services, Twenty Years of California Library Literacy Services, 1984–2004: A Retrospective, informational brochure (Sacramento: California State Library, 2006).
3. Mike Dillon and Christina DiCaro, CLA lobbyists, “Legislative Update: Governor Releases 2013-14 Budget – Library Funding Preserved,” News from the Capitol, email to CLA members, Jan. 10, 2013.
4. National Center for Educational Statistics, “National Assessment of Adult Literacy: State and County Estimates of Low Literacy,” accessed Jan. 29, 2013.
5. US Census Bureau, “2010 Demographic Profile,” accessed Feb.11, 2013.
6. US Census Bureau, “Profile of General Demographic Characteristics: 2000,” accessed Feb. 11, 2013.
7. Rick J. Ashton and Danielle Patrick Milam, Welcome Stranger: Public Libraries Build The Global Village (Chicago: Urban Libraries Council, 2008).
8. Neal Peirce, “Libraries and New Americans: The Indispensable Link,” The Washington Post Writer’s Group, Apr. 13, 2008, accessed Jan. 29, 2013.
9. Jonathan Bowles, A World of Opportunity (New York: Center for Urban Exchange, 2007).
10. Ashton and Milam, Welcome Stranger.
11. Ibid., 5.
12. Luis J. Kong, “Immigration, Racial Profiling, and White Privilege: Community-Based Challenges and Practices for Adult Educators,” New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 125 (Spring 2010): 65–77.
13. Daphne W. Ntiri, “Toward a Functional and Culturally Salient Definition of Literacy,” Adult Basic Education and Literacy Journal 3, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 103.
14. Martin Nystrand et al., Opening Dialogue (New York: Columbia University, 1997): 8.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., 77.
17. Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness (New York: Seabury Press, 1973).
18. Ashton and Milam, Welcome Stranger.
19. Asian American Justice Center, Adult Literacy Education In Immigrant Communities: Identifying Policy And Program Priorities For Helping Newcomers Learn English (Washington D.C.: Asian American Justice Center, 2007).
20. Ashton and Milam, Welcome Stranger.
21. Asian American Justice Center, Adult Literacy Education In Immigrant Communities, ix.

The post Failing to Read Well The Role of Public Libraries in Adult Literacy, Immigrant Community Building, and Free Access to Learning first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Fast-forward two decades and by a circuitous route through many jobs, experiences, and locations, I now live in Oakland and am the coordinator of the Second Start program. Most striking to me upon moving to California in 1996 were the resources available to library-based adult literacy programs and the culture of adult learner involvement that permeated these programs. Project Read, our program in North San Mateo County, had many shades of colored paper on hand—all the time! On a level deeper than office supplies, however, was a culture of innovation and creativity that was apparent in programs throughout the Bay Area. Library literacy practitioners were researching, creating, and publishing materials with and for participants in their volunteer-based programs. They had the opportunity to envision and implement a variety of models of teaching and learning; they worked with marginalized people through partnership and leadership development. The design of literacy services included the voices of the adults being served—adult literacy students. The Oakland Readers series demonstrates this ethos.

The structure that comes with being a library program made a world of difference in supporting this vibrancy, and continues to make sense on many levels. Libraries represent a neutral, safe territory in a community and come complete with a culture of lifelong learning, guaranteed confidentiality, and a wealth of materials. Everyone who walks through the door has the potential to learn—there is no “us and them,” and it is nobody else’s business what you’ve come to the library to learn more about. Libraries are committed to providing access to information, and increased literacy skills can make lifelong learning a reality for people who did not learn to read and write as well as they wanted through the traditional route of schooling. Being at the library is a chance to redefine adult learning: The library is not a school for big people who didn’t succeed; instead, it’s a resource for ongoing learning for everyone, regardless of where you fall on the continuum of skills.

Some History of California Library Literacy Services

Second Start was one of the original library-based literacy programs in California. In 1983, State Librarian Gary Strong had the vision to bring adult literacy programs to libraries in California in order to serve people who were not served anywhere else in the community and to expand access to libraries and their many resources. To avoid duplicating already-available adult education services and stave off potential turf battles, the state library worked with the California Department of Education and with community stakeholders to identify adults—English-proficient adults who were not equipped with basic skills to succeed in classroom-based settings—who were not served anywhere else. Strong hired Al Bennett, an adult literacy organizer from Pennsylvania, to use what were then called LSCA (now LSTA) funds to design and implement library literacy programs, and these funds started flowing in 1984. The effects of Proposition 13, a major anti-tax measure passed in California in 1978, were being felt strongly by public institutions at the time. Strong demonstrated vital leadership in the face of criticism from some members of the library community who felt it was not a good time to start something new when libraries were suffering financially as they were.

In a move that helped programs take root and garner local community support, planners at the state library, knowledgeable about many possible models of adult literacy education—some more politically radical than others—held out an “each one teach one” program design. The involvement of community volunteers integral to one-on-one tutoring helped generate buy-in for library literacy programs throughout the state, since most literacy volunteers tend to love their library and can also be quite vocal in their support. Volunteers who had the opportunity to work with adult literacy students helped advocate for and stabilize literacy services as a library function. In 1989, the state legislature with bipartisan effort and support, passed the California Library Services Act, putting language for library-based literacy programs into law. This move stabilized state library matching money for programs for decades to come.

Funding Challenges

In 2011–12, in the throes of massive budget problems in the state of California, funding for California State Library programs was eliminated from the budget. For the first time since 1984, adult literacy programs received no financial support from the state library. This loss of matching funds threatened Second Start’s family literacy programming and computer learning lab. Fortunately, OPL leadership put out funds to see these services function through the remainder of the 2012 fiscal year. Some literacy programs in California closed down, however, and others reduced to an alarming degree the number of students they could serve.

Then, the governor pitched a 2012–13 budget that greatly reduced the state library budget and did not include any funding for public libraries. In a turn of events that seems nothing short of a miracle given the dire financial straits of the state of California, $4.7 million was restored to the 2012–13 budget, with $2.82 of that distributed among library literacy programs. California Library Association (CLA) lobbyists Mike Dillon and Christina DiCaro worked tirelessly to get political support to put money back in the budget. Hundreds and hundreds of library supporters, including adult literacy learners and volunteer tutors, wrote letters to members of the senate and assembly budget subcommittees. Our regional network of library literacy program providers in the Bay Area worked together to contribute to this letter-writing campaign, with our network leaders coordinating with CLA lobbying efforts. Students and tutors told their compelling stories to lawmakers at budget subcommittee hearings in Sacramento. Staff people contributed their personal time to this effort since direct political advocacy on work time is inappropriate. Adult literacy students are natural, effective participants in advocacy efforts like this one. One of the main purposes of adult literacy education is to have a voice in the world and to be taken seriously in more and more social contexts. Learning about the issues, writing letters, speaking in public, being able to advocate for your point of view, and influencing public policy to support your own interests are all activities that strengthen that voice. Ultimately, a unanimous, bipartisan vote in these subcommittees restored the money back into the budget. It was an example of how democracy can work when people take the time to voice their interests. The way library users, literacy program participants included, responded to this budget crisis paints a picture of how literacy programs are part and parcel of larger library workings and interests.

Funding for Second Start, like all other library services, comes from OPL which is a department of the City of Oakland. The program also has a solid base of donors and the capacity to work with library administration on outside grant sources. The state library uses a formula that matches locally raised funds, taking into account a number of measures including the size of each program. Most all of Second Start’s library funding comes from Measure Q, a dedicated parcel tax for OPL passed with overwhelming support in 2004 to stabilize library services for years to come. Measure Q itself has become a real lifesaver for library services these past several years, as the general economy has slumped and finances in Oakland have taken a beating.

In 2011, Second Start was pegged for outright elimination, along with fourteen of the seventeen branch libraries in the OPL system. One budget balancing idea on the table in city hall proposed cutting general funds to OPL below the minimum amount legally necessary to allow for the collection of the Measure Q parcel tax. The budget would have gone from $24 million to $4 million. Library supporters in Oakland came out in droves to city council meetings, and library users, library friends groups, and OPL staff people—once again on their own time—devised a savvy campaign to publicize the issue and to organize advocacy efforts to save the library. Second Start supporters, including adult learners and volunteers, appeared at awareness-raising events and at city council meetings along with library supporters of every other stripe imaginable. In a by-the-skin-of-the-teeth decision, major cuts to library services (including the closure of Second Start) were avoided. Looking back to the beginning of library literacy programs, the voices and advocacy work of literacy students and community volunteers continue to be a bedrock of support and survival.

The integration of literacy programs into libraries has become part of the physical architecture of buildings. I have worked in library basements and closets, but as new libraries are built, they often feature built-in literacy program space. The Second Start program moved into some new space in 2012. While the main library in downtown Oakland is not a new building (then-Governor Earl Warren sat on its front steps at the library’s dedication in 1951), our library leadership planned and saw through the construction of dedicated space for Second Start. Our new digs include classroom space, a computer learning lab, new furniture, windows all around, and a view of Lake Merritt. Recently, California State Library Programs Consultant Carla Lehn said that, “In California, we have successfully integrated these programs so libraries see them as core services that are part of what libraries do.”¹ Being housed in a specially designed, centralized location at OPL physically embodies this sentiment.

Second Start’s journey from the main library in the early-1980s back to the main library in 2012 has been action packed. The program’s adventures have dovetailed with the general health of the field of adult literacy education. By the time the California State Library made LSCA money available in 1984, OPL had already experimented with adult literacy services for several years. A staff person dedicated a few hours each week to a volunteer program that operated out of a box containing the names and numbers of students and tutors. The program started with nothing, but hung in there and steadily picked up steam from the mid-1980s and into the early 2000s. Talented leadership and a wide variety of competitive grants and donors solidified Second Start’s financial health and capacity to serve more and more students. The program moved out of the library building in 1989 to downtown office spaces in order to accommodate an ever-growing number of adult learners.

Adult literacy was popular in those years and enjoyed support from the media, elected officials, and funders. The National Literacy Act passed in 1991, adding an agency dedicated to adult literacy, the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL), to the panoply of federal programs. For many years, Second Start received money from the NIFL’s research arm, the National Center for the Study of Adult Literacy and Learning, to research persistence in adult literacy education. The Oakland Readers series, and other student-driven publications, were published in several iterations over the years with grant money from a variety of sources. The acknowledgments of funding support found on the inside covers of these books read like an impressive “who’s who” directory of foundations and grant sources and adult literacy supporters, all with the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Fund figuring prominently. Second Start was in on it all.

Successes

In pointing to Second Start’s successes, a good place to start is the one-on-one tutoring model. While adult literacy students and volunteer tutors often come from different socioeconomic groups, when paired up, they might form meaningful, long-term bonds that are transformative for everyone involved. It’s a unique contribution to social cohesion in Oakland. While low literacy skills are persistent and systemic in the United States (93 million adults rank in the lower levels of the most recent national assessment of functional literacy skills²), they are often a source of personal shame and regret that individuals shoulder alone. Second Start is a place where people can tell their stories, belong to a larger community of learning, and gain a forward-looking view of lifelong learning. Volunteer tutors from the community participate in fifteen hours of tutor training before we match them with a student. Tutors learn to develop activities that include not just writing and reading strategies for phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension practice, but that also address what learners want or need to do in the roles they play in their everyday life.

Four main purposes bring students to adult literacy education: (1) the desire to have a voice in the world and be taken seriously, (2) the ability to take independent action, (3) to gain access to information, and (4) to learn how to learn effectively in a fast-changing society.³ We have no set curriculum and no standardized testing; service is individually geared to each learner. The driving question for instruction in Second Start is, “What do you want to learn about or be able to do?” Recent achievements from the past couple months are as varied as the individuals in the program. They include registering to vote, voting and reading about election results, getting a library card, reading a map for work, finishing a book on Muhammed Ali, learning about blood donation guidelines, passing the driving test, visiting a hardware store to practice construction terminology, and writing analyses of dreams.

Tutoring pairs work together on a wide variety of interests and needs. Common to all successful matches is growth in self-confidence. Take for example, Randall and Dan. This tutoring pair shows how far confidence and partnership can go in learning together. Randall has studied in Second Start for more than two years now, first in a small reading practice group led by a staff person, and then with his tutor, Dan. He came to the program because despite having gone through school, he didn’t gain adequate skills. Randall wanted to pursue his dream of someday going to college. He felt that having a degree would help him go into business some day and he could achieve his dreams of helping people.

Working with Dan, Randall has been able to move through some basic skills classes at a local community college, which eventually lead to enrollment in courses for credit. He recently enrolled in classes that will eventually transfer toward a degree. Dan has helped Randall every step of the way, helping him learn to read, “1,000 times better,” organize materials to study, function in a classroom setting, and talk to teachers. In discussing his experiences Randall credits Dan for helping him pursue his passions and “for making me a priority. I love him for that, and for his confidence in me to achieve things. Sometimes Dan is more motivated than I am when life looks dark. He brings sun and light to that darkness.”⁴

While his long-term goal is a college degree, Randall has been able to help other people and make impressive differences in the world around him. One of his driving passions is HIV/AIDS awareness and education, as Randall has had friends with the disease who have suffered and died. He and Dan worked with astonishing dedication this past year to organize an HIV/AIDS awareness and education event. Together they planned out what the structure of the event would be: an American Idol type event including musical acts punctuated with an educational component of stories told by young people living with HIV. They realized they needed a venue and they brought in the support of the community college’s student government so it could be held for free at the college’s facilities. Randall recruited all the hip hop, jazz, and R&B talent. His work was written about in the local media and Dan helped arrange recognition for the event from US Congresswoman Barbara Lee. Oakland Mayor Jean Quan proclaimed April 12, 2012, as Hip Hop 4 HIV, Jazz and R&B Community College Showcase Day in the City of Oakland. Ultimately 250 people came and nearly seventy young people got tested for HIV in exchange for free admission to the event.

Randall said, “Dan can be modest if he wants to,” and adds, “but I wouldn’t be in the position I am today without him. I really excelled when I got tutoring. I could see progress.”⁵ Dan has really been able to attach skills to Randall’s interests and aspirations and considers tutoring an ongoing learning experience himself. Most tutoring pairs don’t have such a large-scale visible impact on the community around them, but they do develop relationships and work together to improve basic skills and gain confidence in order to address what really matters in a person’s life.

While one-on-one tutoring remains a central component of the Second Start program, we also offer other vital services. Students can participate in small learning groups led by a staff person, a computer learning lab with the added opportunity to receive specialized tutoring on computer-related job seeking activities, the support and guidance of a student on staff and family literacy programming for adults with children in their lives. We regularly offer workshops and learning opportunities that engage different permutations of students and tutors, depending on their interests. They have participated in offerings as varied as poetry writing; recorded conversations with the StoryCorps organization; strategy sessions to improve phonemic awareness; workshops for families that include a family literacy activity with free book giveaways and dinner; voting information meetings from the League of Women Voter; training on software that reads any text out loud; and two job skills workshops on interviewing and how to keep and succeed on a job.

Program Challenges

People who need literacy services the most might have the toughest time finding a program and might not have a minimum level of stability necessary to make a long-term commitment. Compared to twenty years ago, both students and tutors have far less time for tutoring. They have less-stable employment and schedules and seem far more stressed economically with the challenges of holding things together.

Some research from the National Institute for Literacy about adult learning and reading theory has helped adult literacy programs become more responsive to the immediate needs adults bring to literacy learning. While we have more tools to help tutoring pairs identify activities and materials that will have the most relevance in their limited time together, attracting students who have the means to meet a tutor regularly and practice new skills has become a major concern for programs like Second Start. Long work hours, juggling more than one job, access to child care, transportation costs, health, and personal crises all present obstacles to continuity.

Crushing poverty and the pressures on working poor people are so much more evident now. The cumulative effects of welfare reform from the late 1990s, added to the economic pressures of living in the expensive Bay Area make regular participation in learning a challenge. The aging of the Great Migration population in the East Bay represents the end of an era of solid jobs that could support families. It is far less common to meet native English speaking adults who have never been to school because they worked as sharecroppers in the South before moving to Oakland. Instead, many urban-raised adults either left school before graduating or were not served adequately during their formal education as children. Or, immigrants who have lived in the United States for years can communicate well in English but have very little formal schooling. Many students today are un- or under-employed and might race from job to job to try and make ends meet. Some have been shut out of the workforce long-term. Add to that the changing definitions of what being literate means anymore—technology skills and greater demands for education credentials for entry-level jobs raise the bar higher and higher. The need for adult literacy education is greater now than ever before.⁶

Second Start asks both students and volunteer tutors to commit to a minimum of six months of tutoring on a regular, once or twice-a-week basis. This expectation lets people know that building skills takes time and practice and doesn’t happen overnight. But that can be quite a high hoop to jump through. At a recent Bay Area library literacy network meeting, programs reported that many tutoring pairs can only meet once a week. While Second Start’s computer learning lab and various workshop events can serve students with irregular schedules, and while offering small group learning is a way of helping people who might not be able to commit to a regular volunteer tutor, it is reasonable to question how much progress can be made in so little time. Given that the need for adult literacy services is still great, but that adults have that much more difficulty participating in it, Second Start has to reconsider the way services have always been delivered.

Our relocation to the main library in 2012 represents a move away from one hub of activity at the West Oakland Library toward a larger presence throughout the city. Second Start’s headquarters are at the main library, but the OPL system has eighteen branches serving many diverse communities in a huge geographic area. Through branches all over town, Second Start has the ability to raise awareness of adult literacy education. The program now offers tutor training workshops at four different libraries. In order to more conveniently serve students and tutors, we have begun conducting new student orientation meetings and individualized student interviews and assessments at branches closer to participants’ homes and workplaces. Tutoring pairs meet at libraries convenient to both the student and the tutor, and Second Start offers a variety of small group instruction programs taught by a staff person in three libraries in different parts of Oakland.

Developing community partnerships outside the library is that much more critical now, not just for student referrals to the program, but also for going outside the walls of the library to serve people where they already spend time. One successful venture that holds possibility for future activity is a partnership Second Start has built with an organization called Center Point. Center Point is an organization that holds a contract with the California Department of Corrections to serve Oakland residents on parole. Our goal at Center Point is to serve adults who need some literacy services when and where they can access them and to raise awareness of and build bridges to OPL and to our library-based program.

We have a stellar volunteer tutor, Denise, who has volunteered as a one-on-one tutor for Second Start since 2009. The student she has worked with has since grown by leaps and bounds. He passed his driver’s test, enrolled in a job training program, and started taking classes at the local community college. Since her student needs her less and less, Denise was looking forward to a new commitment in Second Start. Denise had years of volunteer literacy experience before joining our program. She is also a former teacher, and she is particularly interested in the criminal justice population. It needs to be said––Denise is a dynamo with extraordinary interpersonal skills.

As a volunteer, she has gotten to know the Center Point staff and has been vital in building a positive, warm, collaborative relationship on which we can build. Denise regularly tutors students at Center Point to help them build skills they will need to eventually pass the GED. Computer skills are a major need as well, as access to and the ability to use computers is an integral piece of literacy. Many people coming out of prison have never used the Internet. Denise begins her work with each person there by helping them get an email account and complete a library card application. In characterizing her work she said, “I’m not providing everything. I’m pointing them to resources and the main one is the library. They all live near a library, even if they’re homeless.”⁷

In addition to straight-up skills tutoring to help people move toward the GED, Denise has been able to help many parolees study on a drop-in basis for the driver’s test. She helps them complete job applications and housing forms as well as community college enrollment paperwork. Leaving prison can be a disorienting experience. Denise talks with parolees about concrete next steps in their lives, giving them confidence along the way. One of her regular students, James, says that Denise, “pushes you, stays on top to help you out, wants to see you make it just as much as you do. I would look out for her.”⁸

The library has so much to offer the clients of Center Point. The OPL branch manager closest to Center Point recently visited parolees with information about relevant library services, and Second Start’s family literacy person was able to make a presentation there and connect Center Point with free children’s books to give to parolees, as many have children or grandchildren. Participants at the center report going to the library for the first time to check email and to look on Craigslist for housing and employment. Some work with Second Start tutors on their basic math and reading skills.

The biggest barrier for serving people on parole is the lack of consistency. Parolees get re-arrested, they get removed from their clean and sober housing for violating parole, people have been shot and stabbed; parolees’ lives are generally unstable. The bridges are slow to build as this population trusts no one. But as Denise and the other wonderful volunteers she attracts, including her own family and friends, keep showing up, trust is growing.

Groundwork for our partnership at Center Point was carefully laid out through a series of meetings with the leadership there. But because Second Start attracts fantastic volunteers, we are able to deploy someone like Denise to follow her passions and do so much on behalf of the program and the library. Not all volunteers would feel happy or confident working with people on parole in Oakland. It’s important to give potential volunteers realistic expectations about what the experience might be like. We have attracted additional volunteer tutors to Center Point through a workshop structure that gives them a chance to observe the goings on there on a limited, no-commitment-required basis.

Once a month, Denise organizes a Second Start mock interview workshop at Center Point. Clients practice interviewing in front of a panel of three or four people and get immediate and written feedback about what went well and what could improve. Second Start volunteers can check out Center Point by either participating as an interviewer or simply by observing the workshop. Several more Second Start tutors have decided to tutor on site there after participating through the workshop.

This mock interview workshop takes place regularly at Center Point, but also travels easily. We have had wonderful success rolling it out at the library with Second Start students and volunteers who entered the program through our more traditional route. Participants both at Center Point and at the library have been able to take the skills they’ve gained and immediately put them to use, as several people have practiced their interviews and had successful real-life interviews—and job offers—shortly thereafter. In addition to mock interviews, we have offered a writing workshop and a job skills workshop that have traveled successfully between the library and Center Point. In the future, we hope to see people fresh out of prison gradually gain stability in life and commit more time to lifelong learning at OPL.

Looking to the Future

So many service providers across the country have scaled back drastically or have disappeared altogether. (The Blue Gargoyle shut its doors in 2009.) In Oakland, adult education services through the school district’s adult school are hanging on by a thread after having its budget decimated in the past few years. Our community college system’s transitional programs are endangered, and other entities have scaled back tremendously or have simply disappeared. The funding scene for adult literacy education is truly in a different place than it was in the 1980s and 1990’s, starting with the National Institute for Literacy that was defunded in 2008. Second Start, with tremendous support as a library department, has weathered many storms. Given the economic and social challenges we face in Oakland. our urban library literacy program must explore more routes to deliver relevant and effective adult literacy services to the resource-strapped people who need them. We will build on the success we’ve had engaging learners inside and outside our library’s walls with excellent volunteers, the smart use of technology, and through meaningful collaborations with community partners. In any case, it is imperative we honor the roots of California Library Literacy Services and work in partnership with the adults we serve to solve problems and innovate.

REFERENCES AND NOTES

1. Carla Lehn, telephone interview with the author, Nov. 6, 2012.
2. National Center on Education Statistics (NCES), “National Assessment of Adult Literacy” (2003), U.S. Department of Education, 2005.
3. Sondra Gayle Stein, Equipped for the Future: A Customer-Driven Vision for Adult Literacy and Lifelong Learning, National Institute for Literacy, 1995.
4. Personal interview with the author, Oct. 4, 2012.
5. Ibid.
6. It is estimated that 19 percent of adults in Alameda County score at below basic functional literacy levels. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), “National Assessment of Adult Literacy” (2003). And with the city’s high school dropout rate placed at 37 percent––the 2nd highest in California––we know that percentage is probably much higher in Oakland. KQED, “New High School Dropout Data: Oakland at 37 Percent.”
7. Personal interview with the author, Nov. 28, 2012.
8. Personal interview with the author, Nov. 28, 2012.

The post Second Start at Oakland Public Library first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Team Ten is a set of plush toys in the shape of numbers zero through nine created by NumbersAlive! to encourage a child’s interaction with numbers. The colorful toys come in multiple colors and sizes, and each number has a back story. The team of ten numbers is lead by their team leader, Zero the Hero, who is the most powerful number because of his ability to combine with other numbers to create a higher value. Created by the Numbers Lady, a.k.a. Rebecca Klemm, who has a PhD in statistics, the plush toys can be combined with books also based on the characters, making math both fun and entertaining through stories and adventures. NumbersAlive! hopes that this will lure more students to move towards STEM (science, technology, engineering, math), a part of education that many students tend not to like. For more information, please visit numbersalive.org.

Story Bayou’s Brush of Truth Book App Gets Tweens Reading

In an attempt to increase literacy among children ages eight to twelve, Story Bayou has teamed up with writer and mom Julie Landry Laviolette to produce this app that allows kids to choose their own path in the story that they are reading. The story has a total of 125 pages, with sixty-five decision points and twenty final endings, taking the reader through an adventure where they act as the main character. In order to be compatible with Common Core State Standards, lesson plans are provided. This app, compatible with both Mac and Android platforms, is like an interactive “choose your own adventure” book, combining the virtues of a videogame with a book to transform the reading experience for the digitally savvy tween.

Rainbow Sentences Turns Reconstructing Sentences into a Fun Game

There are a lot of reading apps out there, but Rainbow Sentences takes reading to the next level by teaching children how to rearrange words and create their own sentences. By color-coding each part of the sentence, children are asked to match the words to the color. The sentence is also accompanied by a picture that represents the sentence. The child has the option of listening to the app read the sentence, as well as record sentences that are correct for future review. When a child gets the answer incorrect twice, a short lesson will come up to teach the child why the sentence was incorrect. There are many levels to the game, with the sentences becoming increasingly more difficult with each level.

Money Habitudes Cards Makes Financial Literacy Easy to Understand

Getting people to talk about finances is always difficult, but Money Habitudes cards make the process a lot easier. Money Habitudes cards contain conversation starters that trainers can use in a variety of games to get a better sense of a person’s financial status. The person playing answers a variety of questions based on how they relate to a statement, and at the end the cards are sorted out into a Money Habitude category: planning, carefree, security, giving, status, and spontaneous. This helps a person see the different categories of spending habits they belong to and the tasks they can do to improve their financial status. Because this game is about a person’s attitude towards money, there are no right or wrong answers to the questions. The cards are available for adults, young adults (ages eighteen to twentyfive), teens, and in Spanish and have been updated in 2012. Order by March 29, 2013, use the code PLA13 (all caps), and receive free shipping.

Big Start—Free Financial Literacy App for Children

With many children becoming so familiar with the iPad, an easy way to teach financial literacy is via an app. The Big Start app includes many fun games, such as What is Money? and Save, Share, and Spend. The games teach children how to identify money, how to save, what things cost, and even shows them what kind of careers they can look forward to. The app, developed by Upromise Investments, Inc., can be downloaded for Mac  or Android.

The post New Product News – Jan/Feb 2013 first appeared on Public Libraries Online.