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My first exposure to immigrant services in public libraries was when I read a case study on free English as a Second Language tutelage for adult learners in Michigan. I was touched then, reading about how great it was for the people involved and the community at large. I saw this NYLA program, Libraries Pave the Road to Citizenship, as a chance for me to learn more about that subject.

I was surprised to learn that I would hear not only about libraries participating in teaching adult immigrants the English language, but also that there are libraries participating in aiding patrons with the naturalization process. The panelists were:

• Homa Naficy, Manager of Multicultural Education and Outreach, The American Place, Hartford Public Library
• Elaine Giardino, Civics for Immigrants Project Manager, Literacy Volunteers of Westchester and Rockland Counties
• Norma V. Menard, Executive Director, Literacy Volunteers of Clinton County

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• Title: Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian
• Author: Scott Douglas
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Pages: 330

Quiet, Please by Scott Douglas is a memoir of a twenty-something male librarian in Anaheim, California. It aims to be humorous and anecdotal, but fails to do either well.

As a recent graduate of library school, I took offense to most of what Douglas has to say. His stories about working with the mentally disabled, physically disabled, elderly, and teenagers are, for the most part, loathsome. They are loathsome because of his attitude towards, and ignorance of, those groups of people.

If a tag cloud was created using all the words in this book, I’m sure that “hate” and “hatred” would be two of his most used words. How can someone work in a public library that hates so many different kinds of people? How can someone who publishes a book about hating so much still keep a job working with so many different kinds of people?

There were parts of the book where Douglas says something like: “[Being a librarian] is my life, my passion. I look ahead and see the road is long, but the road is bright” (p. 318). He makes these statements after pages upon pages of either complaining about his career choice and making it sound like a job for people beneath him, or telling a story filled with ignorance and arrogance about a patron he did not understand or bother to learn from.

Additionally, Douglas employs footnotes and “pointless interludes to fill your mind with nonsense” (p. 4). This format is gimmicky and a waste of time. The writing is not at all challenging, and the author’s use of the gimmicky format adds to his condescending and pedantic tone of voice. Overall, I found this book infuriating. It gives a very bad representation of librarians in America. (.5/5)

Day three at ALA was my last day in California, after about four weeks of traveling throughout the state. By that point, I was very tired, and only managed to attend one program before heading home. The program I attended was called Hey! I Want to Do That Too! Gaming and the Elementary Age Child (1330-1500).

This program was presented by Dr. Warren Buckleitner, a former elementary school teacher, current New York Times contributor, current adjunct assistant professor at NYU, and current editor of Children’s Technology Review. His presentation was on creating a media center, or Mediatech (like biblioteca), for a public library. Dr. Buckleitner split his presentation up into two parts:

1. the history of Mediatech at his library, and
2. selecting the right materials to create a Mediatech of one’s own.

During the first part, Dr. Buckleitner explained how he developed a Mediatech at the library where he lives (and is a library trustee) in Flemington, New Jersey. Luckily for Dr. Buckleitner, when he pitched the idea to “VIPs in town” and the library board in 1998, he faced no opposition. In 2000, he already had the support of an attorney, schools, and library trustees to create a non-profit organization and begin fundraising. By 2001, they decided on the library as the location of Mediatech, and the library board contributed a $100,000 trust to renovate the space. Mediatech opened on May 23, 2003, marking the anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s nonstop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris.

Dr. Buckleitner’s media center has about eight computers, all of which were donated. Most of the games available at Mediatech were donated by Dr. Buckleitner, himself, as he writes reviews for them.

Reflection on My Third Day at ALA Annual 2008

Dr. Buckleitner was a very good speaker. His presentation was engaging and informative. He definitely knows about children and what they want. However, I don’t know how useful this program would have been for someone who attempted to set up a media center, faced opposition, and was looking for advice. Dr. Buckleitner’s story almost sounded like a fairy tale; everything important went the way it should have. There wasn’t a struggle, which is a common thing in public libraries in America… what with the budget cuts and libraries closing everywhere.

I think this program could have been more useful if the speaker presented strategies for succeeding in cases where not everything goes the way it should.

I just finished reading a lovely case study called “Ripples of Impact,” written by Maria Souden and Sarah Wooden, from How Libraries and Librarians Help (2005). The focus of this case study was on the Washtenaw Literacy Program supported by the Ypsilanti District Public Library in Michigan.

Souden and Wooden illustrate the many impacts the program has on the people involved: the adult learners and the tutors. All of the impacts are so touching and so important. I suppose the impacts that are most striking to me are the ones that go beyond the direct and personal changes, the “extended impacts.” Literacy tutelage gives learners the confidence to become voters, to participate in government, in unions, in the library. It not only helps everyday aspects of their lives, but helps them feel empowered enough to become citizens with a voice.

I love that idea: that we, as librarians, can help make such an amazing impact on other peoples’ lives. I love that librarians can and do achieve such things.

Background

One early morning in mid-December 2007, Joe Osborn and I were inspired. I recently completed a course on human-computer interaction, and the gears in my mind were turning. How could we design a library game for children?

Our ideas quickly accumulated as we ate breakfast. The game would aim to:

• recommend media based on preferences (keywords, subjects, reading levels, previously borrowed materials, data-mining a la Amazon.com, etc.)
• easily guide the patrons to the physical locations of their desired materials
• present the library organization to children in their terms (through exciting technology)
• provide a means to take the library home, allowing access from remote locations

Privacy Concerns

During our conversation that morning, we discussed the potential threats to intellectual freedom. Especially in the time of the PATRIOT ACT, libraries should be, and are often, wary of collecting information about their patrons. However, there are ways in which the information can be stored via this game/service. The catalog should be online, in order to allow for more frequent updates and access to OCLC. As an online service, the site should be secure (https://) with encrypted data.

Goals

This service is still in the early planning stages, but it aims to provide support to a generation very different from the ones before it. Children today and tomorrow will be internet natives, used to, and expecting, flashy interfaces and ease-of-use. The library must work to prove itself valuable in the lives of these children, providing them with the easiest and most efficient access to all the appropriate materials available to them.

The catalog game must be:

• intuitive; easy to use
• highly interactive and fun!
• interesting through its dynamic elements
• useful in aiding children learn how to use the library
• in their terms, through the use of avatars and creative environment design