Open Doors : Reaching Underserved Populations - schedule

Our organizations and the communities we serve are becoming more diverse than ever with a range of cultures, including ethnic, national, generational, etc. What cultural opportunities or challenges does this present with our patrons and underserved populations? How does our cultural identity impact our interactions at work? What diverse populations are our libraries serving or underserving? The deficit in services may be a result of a lack of cultural intelligence or cultural awareness. Dr. Villagran will share with us how we can use Cultural Intelligence to address these concerns and become more effective library and information professionals.

The American Community Survey estimates that as of 2016, over 7 million Americans live with a visual disability. An estimated 20 million more struggle with physical disabilities that could prevent them from using standard print materials. According to the International Dyslexia Association, as much as 15-20% of the population has a reading disability. All of these differently-abled individuals could qualify for service through a National Library Services for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) regional library. Learn about the services offered by NLS libraries, which open a world of accessible books to qualifying individuals in your library's service region. These alternate formats and services are delivered directly to doorsteps, desktops and mobile devices.

In addition to providing reading materials, many NLS libraries also offer accessible programming to their patrons. Wolfner Talking Book and Braille Library has two successful programs that have been adapted from traditional library programming to serve special needs patrons. For adults, this includes the book club by conference call program and its subsequent spin-offs. For the youth, an accessible early literacy program was created to foster literacy in Wolfner Library's youngest patrons. Learn about the ways these traditional programs were adapted and implemented within the state of Missouri and find inspiration from the programs to incorporate at your library.

Today, there has been a series of national and state policy reforms that have greatly affected immigrants across America today. One major change is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy known as (DACA). On campuses today, there are over 800,000 young people who have DACA status according to national statistics. DACA recipients are not eligible for financial aid, work assistance programs, federal aids and loans at all. In addition to political reforms, the limited options may create additional barriers for these students to achieve academic success. What can academic libraries and librarians do to support undocumented students? From open workshops to scholarships to collaborations with campus partners to creating safe and inclusive spaces in the library, this presentation showcases a series of activities on how academic librarians can support undocumented students in the era of uncertainty. This interactive webinar will encourage attendees to share their experiences and thoughts on this discussion and to brainstorm new opportunities to supporting DACA recipients, undocumented students and immigrant/international students in general.

Do you wish you could say more about your outreach services other than how many people you reached? Do you know the impact your programs are having on under-served populations in your community? The Public Library Association’s Project Outcome is a free and easy-to-use online toolkit that helps libraries collect patron outcome data through simple surveys and ready-made reports and data visualizations. Discover how participating libraries are using Project Outcome to measure the impact of their outreach services and programs targeting under-served populations. Learn how outcome data will help your library make programmatic improvements, create partnerships, inform strategic planning and increase funding.

Do you know where to look for quality resources on sexual orientation and gender identity? A 2015-2016 survey revealed that librarians often struggle with finding materials to add to their collections, either because they are unfamiliar with the subject area or do not know where to look. This presentation will provide an overview of terminology and collection development resources such as book reviews and awards. Other collection management issues will be discussed, including formulating policies, weeding, and dealing with patron challenges to materials. The goal of this session is for you to walk away with a toolkit that will help you make sense of what seems, on the surface, to be alphabet soup.

The Prison Education Project (PEP) at Washington University provides courses at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Facility in Pacific, MO. for prisoners and staff. The Libraries were asked to provide PEP with curriculum recommendations regarding research training for students that would support the prisoners, and also to investigate research resources for incarcerated students that could function in an environment without internet access. The goal of my presentation is to provide an overview of the efforts to date, share information on resources that we and others have obtained which work in an offline environment (such as the offline JSTOR drive), and solicit additional recommendations from conference participants/attendees regarding offline resources.

Counties, cities, & states across the United States are striving to help better serve their homeless population. In this vein, beginning in 2017 Fresno County Public Library partnered with MAP Point at Poverello House, a local multi-agency access program, that runs an integrated intake process onsite at the local shelter. MAP connects individuals facing housing, substance abuse, physical health and/or mental health challenges to any supportive services that exist. The Fresno County Library (FCPL) assists the Poverello House by regularly bringing the mobile computer classroom (Digibus) to the premises. The Digibus, equipped with 12 workstations, a printer, WiFi/connectivity, charging stations, and friendly staff onboard to give clients the chance to job search, check status or apply to public housing, submit disability claims, and much more.

Interested in offering sensory programming in your library? Plano Public Library designed two programs (Sensory Storytime and Sensory Saturday) for a small audience to encourage this underserved population to participate in a safe, comfortable, non-judgmental environment, and be comfortable to be themselves. Learn how to create a welcoming environment so children with autism spectrum disorders, sensory integrations challenges, and other related issues can participate in activities in your library. The presenters will share how to choose books, music, and activities and program outlines for each program.

For two years, the Plaza Library in Kansas City MO has been providing programs for people with dementia. What began as a simple, bi-monthly movie screening has grown to monthly Memory Cafes and community wide learning programs. This session will cover our current programming best practices and our plans to make our entire city more Memory Aware.

As a librarian, at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU), I have had the opportunity to witness students who come from a background where they were offered little to no access to libraries and technology. While we would like to think the students we serve are already familiar with the library and come from backgrounds where they have access to information. Unfortunately in the world that we live in today, there are still young people who enter college whose concept of using a library or even a computer is minimal. How do we begin to familiarize our underserved first-generation college students to the services that libraries provide? According to Albert Ritzhaupt "poor and minority families in the United States are less likely to have access to a computer and broadband Internet connection at home and less likely to have the necessary skills and knowledge to meaningfully use these resource." This problem alone usually leads to an issue with retention once that student arrives at college. One of the ways the John Brown Watson Memorial Library offers guidance with this issue is with an Information Literacy Program which includes gamification, within this program students are given the opportunity to learn about all of the resources that the library provides and how to perform basic computer operations.

Armed with a used bookmobile and a vision of how to bring early literacy to the underserved pockets of its three-county library community, Mid-Continent Public Library set out on a brand new mobile mission. Without existing policy, procedure, or precedent, every experience, from fashioning “Gertie” into a state-of-the-art mobile literacy vehicle to figuring out where to park all 38 feet of her, was a brand new experience. Despite all of the bumps and bruises encountered in launching the Reading Rocket: Mobile Literacy Vehicle, the first year of operation saw more than 17,000 visitors come aboard!

Collectively, the staff of Palm Springs Public Library assessed the needs of the community in order to address lack of library usage by the predominately non-English speaking residents. Staff worked on community outreach, creating partnerships and new programming. Attendance statistics significantly improved through collaboration with local municipal summer camp during the Summer Reading Program, when new programs were created through partnerships with outside community organizations and groups, and when Preschool storytime was revamped into interactive Bilingual Storytime. A new Spanish language program series emerged which included book discussions, poetry festivals and celebrating Hispanic Heritage. A Cultural Tapestry Series was created to highlight all cultural groups in the community. New programs were implemented for tweens and teens: Teen Advisory Board, Collectible Card Games Club and other special events that interest our youth such as Free Comic Book Day. With new enthusiasm, the library is emerging as the heart of the neighborhood.

This presentation will provide an overview of UT Dallas programs and services for students with disabilities. It will outline UT Dallas libraries document scanning and delivery service for visually impaired students and include our collaboration with other departments, workflow, copyright exceptions, and issues we have found with the pilot program.

In the last two years, McDermott Library at the University of Texas at Dallas discovered a need in services for visually impaired students. Our library provides students with disabilities access to our accessibility office with adaptive technology and access to 4 librarians who are trained in adaptive hardware and software. As our adaptive technology equipment has aged, it has become more cumbersome to use and less useful to our students causing a decline in usage. Further, many of our current students own or have access to adaptive technology at home.

Despite the decline in usage of the libraries adaptive technology and the rise of personal adaptive technology in homes, we discovered a need from our visually impaired students for converting physical materials to specialized formats. This last year, we decided to pilot a program for visually impaired students by providing OCR (Optical Character Recognition) PDF scans of print materials to students with disabilities.

To lessen the staff burden of scanning materials, we utilized the efficiency of interlibrary loan staff to process, scan, and deliver OCR documents to patrons with disabilities. The Interlibrary Loan department was ideal for this type of program because they already have workflows in place for high demand scanning projects. The interlibrary loan department works closely with reference and e-reserves staff to evaluate students’ needs and come up with appropriate solutions for each patron. The pilot program has been a success so far and has received positive feedback from patrons.