Observe and Document a Program at a Library

Topic: Diversity
Program title: "Little Natives in the library" run at Gordon library in Sydney

I observed and documented a program run at my local public library for children aged 10 to 12 years called “Little natives in the library”. The program was run by four Aboriginal presenters and the help of two library staff. The program consisted of the presenters talking to the children about Aboriginal culture, presenting two Aboriginal dreamtime stories, getting the children to help perform a simple traditional style dance and the children creating dot painting art. The program went very well with about thirty children attending, who had lots of fun and learnt about another culture at the same time.

By observing and documenting this program as well as talking to the presenters and library staff afterwards I found that I had learned quite a few things some of these include:

• That culturally diverse programing can be fun and informative for parents, children and staff.
• That learning through play and fun activities is a very good way to teach children and attract them to the library.
• That a well-run program can increase customer satisfaction and attendance.
• That programs need to be interesting to children for them to work.
• But most surprisingly I learned that even though programs look like a group of children having fun they are also learning in such a subtle way that the children may not even realise it.

This activity was very relevant to children and young adult librarians, below are some ways this relevance is shown.

• Firstly running a culturally diverse program like this has the potential to help develop the children into well rounded adults. Because if they come to understand and appreciate other cultures they are likely to be more accepting and less prejudiced (Buttlar, 1994 ; Okoye-Johnston, 2011).
• Secondly running a program like this can help to fulfil their recreational and information needs of the community which is two of any libraries main goals (Cerney, Markey & Williams, 2006).
• Thirdly running this type of program has the ability to attract more culturally diverse clients because if they see the library is running a program on their culture it may make them feel more included and comfortable at the library which could lead to these groups of users becoming regular clients (Alexander & Kwon, 2010).
• Fourthly libraries see themselves as places that encourage learning in all forms and by running these culturally diverse programs the library can make learning more like a game. Because if the program is done in such a way that the learning is very subtle the children may not even realise they are learning until they talk to their parents afterwards (Smallwood, 2010).
• And finally when the library runs this sort of program they can use it as a bridge to the rest of the collection, by letting the attendees know what other resources the library has on the culture (Alexander & Kwon, 2010).

 I found that I need to do more research on how best to present multicultural programs and how to use these programs to attract non-library users. To bridge this knowledge gap I would talk to library professionals and review the research. I also need to find out which is the largest multicultural group in my area if I was to create a program like this. I would look at community statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics for this.

References

Alexander, L. B. & Kwon, N. (2010). Multicultural Programs for Tweens and Teens. Retrieved from       CSU EBook library.

Buttlar, L. (1994). Facilitating cultural diversity in college and university libraries. Journal Of Academic Librarianship, 20(1), 10.

Cerny, R., Markey, P. & Williams, A. (2006). Outstanding Library Service to Children : Putting the Core Competencies to Work. Retrieved from CSU EBook library.

Okoye-Johnson, O. (2011). Does Multicultural Education Improve Students’ Racial Attitudes? Implications for Closing the Achievement Gap. Journal of Black Studies, 42(8), 1252-1274. doi: 10.1177/0021934711408901

Smallwood, C. (2010). Librarians as community partners: an outreach handbook. Retrieved from CSU EBook library