library services for patrons with disabilities

At the CAL Conference last month, I attended a workshop on some of the best projects to which LSTA awarded special grants. One of the projects was done by the Pueblo City/County Library as it added some assistive technologies for people with disabilites to better use the library services. I also checked out some of the services available for people with disabilities at the Denver Public Library at this link http://denverlibrary.org/about/disabilities.html
An online handout about the Pueblo City/County Library's project is available at http://www.cal-webs.org/handouts08/diverse.pdf

Online Community for the Disabled

Dr. Glen House is the co-founder of an online community exclusively targeting those with disabilities and those whose lives they touch. He brings a personal insight to this as he became a quadriplegic nearly 2 decades ago after a skiing accident. Disaboom.com made its debut in 2007 and has components including health information, living forward with a disability and community, where you can blog, meet others, create a network and share stories.

The disabled community-including those affected (an estimate of 54 million) medical professionals, relatives, friends, employers and coworkers affected- is huge, estimated at 180 million and growing. The greatest need within this community is sharing information. The website topped one million hits in November.

Senior Programing Ideas

While browsing our Professional Collection I noticed two books which are excellent sources for working with our Senior Population. The first is Serving Seniors by RoseMary Honnold and Saralyn A. Mesaros. It's a hands-on guide for libraries with ideas to begin and expand services to the older adults in the community. Some of the topics include: Build a Collection to Serve Senior Adults, Start a Discussion Group, Offer Informative and Entertaining Programs, and Surf the Net with Seniors to name a few. The other book is Elder-Berries, Library Programs for Older Adults. It is filled with ideas for presenting programs at nursing homes, assisted living facillities, or the library. The plans are simple including a brief description, materials and equipment needed, and some helpful hints.

Web Accessibility Initiative

The topic of accessibility of ALD's catalog came up at our last Interest Group meeting. I came across a website of a group that is working on recommendations to improve web accessibility for people with disabilities. Some of it is rather technical, but some of the recommendations are understandable even for non-techies. Take a look here http://www.w3.org/WAI/

Ballot proposal for people with developmental disabilities

There is a proposal on the November ballot, Amendment 51, to increase the state sales tax to provide funds for services for people with developmental disabilities. To learn more about this proposal, you can go to the online version of the election "blue book", which contains the text of the proposal, analysis, and arguments for and against. http://www.state.co.us/gov_dir/leg_dir/lcsstaff/bluebook/2008EnglishVersionforInternet.pdf
Click on the left-hand side on the sections you want to read.

ALA Office for Literacy and Outreach Services

I just returned from the Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services (ABOS) Conference. While I was there I had the opportunity to meet Satia Orange, who is the Director of the ALA Office for Literacy and Outreach Services (OLOS). Ms. Orange spoke about the many resources that OLOS provides to those serving special populations. She also handed out toolkit sheets that I'll be sure to bring to the meeting on Wednesday. The toolkits are all available online as well. The site also includes links to ALA groups such as GLBTRT, ABOS, CALA, and REFORMA. Here is a link to the OLOS site:
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/olos/index.cfm

Russian Fire-Bird Festival at the Chuchr of All Saints

September 13 I have participated in the Russian festival “Fire-Bird” organized by the Russian Orthodox Church of All Saints. It was the very first such festival and it attracted many Russians as well as many English speakers. I brought books (both for kids and adults) on Russian history, culture and Russian Orthodox Church. And I was able to check out quite a few of them – especially children’s books. I also issued library cards to people from Colorado Springs who did not know they could have ALD cards and check out books from GL. They were very happy to learn that we have a large collection of Russian books which included a good portion of kids’ books, audio-books and DVDs. I also explained to some people who came to the festival from Nebraska (!) how to get Russian books through interlibrary loan. I was surprised at how few people realized they could get our books no matter where they lived! Besides book I brought to the festival ALD handout materials (Deweys, information on the computer classes, Construction Party fliers, etc). And it was really handy, because many people came and ask for this information. In general I am glad I came to this festival: I got acquainted with Father Boris (the priest) and with many other people from the parish (both Russian- and English-speaking) who were either unaware of the Russian collection at ALD at all or were not aware of its size and versatility. I saw many familiar faces of adoptive parents and kids from the REECA camp and I was asked many times whether when we move to the new library we are going to have Russian classes or study groups. Concerning study groups: this question was mainly asked by English speakers who converted into Russian Orthodox faith and who would like to learn Russian and/or practice their language skills.

Time change for the Special Pops meeting

The Special Populations Special Interest Group meeting time has been changed from 8:30 to 8:00 am. Date and location will remain the same:

October 15
8:00 to 9:30 am
Public Meeting Room, Admin Building

Immigrant Integration Grant

Hello,

I wanted to share an exciting program. Spring Institute of Intercultural Learning, SI, our partner for English as a Second Language, ESL, classes, wrote a $5,000 grant to Western Union for an Immigrant Integration Grant for incorporating Library Literacy into the ESL curriculum.

This pilot program will begin with the 8 ESL classes at Glendale and the Glendale Library staff.

SI has hired a reference librarian from DPL, who has also taught ESL classes for them for nearly 16 years, to write up the library literacy curriculum to add to the ESL curriculum with ALD input.

This pilot program began September 1, 2008 and runs through August 31, 2009.

Some parts include: Library Literacy training and library tours for ESL instructors
Pre/post surveys for students on library use and knowledge
Pre/post surveys for GL staff on comfort working with diverse patrons
ALD Lang Lib developing level appropriate library tours and library literacy
instruction
and more.

I will post updates and progress throughout the year on this wonderful partnership.

Cindy McFadden

Next Special Populations Interest Group Meeting is October 15

The 2nd Special Populations Interest Group Meeting will be held on:

October 15
Public Meeting Room, Admin.
8:30 am to 10:00 am

The Colorado Talking Book Library

Have you heard about the Colorado Talking Book Library? The CTBL, located on Sheridan Blvd., is a service of the Colorado Department of Education. It provides free recorded books, also Braille and large print, via mail. Adults or children can be served by this library. Interested patrons will need to fill out the application and have it signed by a professional (usually medical).
Why would a patron use this service rather than the audio books at the public library? For one thing, the tapes and other materials arrive at the home via regular mail, so no transportation to the library is needed. Also, there are a wide variety of recorded magazines available too, as well as local Colorado material.
The CTBL cassettes are played on special machines, which the patron keeps at home as long as the service is being used.
Find out more about how you can help patrons use this resource at http://www.cde.state.co.us/ctbl/index.htm

Senior Resource Day

This event is on Friday, October 10, 2008 at the Buck Community Recreation Center from 9:30-2:00. It is designed to give people of all ages access to information that will help them as they journey along their own individual path to health & wholeness. This is free and open to the public. There will be food, and speakers on spirituality, yoga, and exercise. Also provided is a free shredding of personal documents to protect identity. This is sponsored by the Arapahoe County Council on Aging. I have flyers if you need any to distribute.

Passport to Russia part 2

The program was a success. Katya sent me some fun Russian children's books from GL. The kids had a great time trying to figure out what the books were about by looking at the pictures. They were able to figure out the Bible and they thought one might a poetry book.

I played a CD of a child reciting the Russian alphabet which they thought sounded a lot harder to learn then the English one but that it sounded a lot cooler!

We also made nesting dolls which we had also learned about during the program. They also enjoyed cookies from a Russian grocery store but were surprised that they were not very sweet like American cookies.

Middle of Everywhere

Monica Owens wanted the group to know about a book called The middle of everywhere : the world's refugees come to our town (2002), edited by Mary Bray Pipher. According to Monica, the book "is a collection of stories about new immigrants’ experiences. It is not at all specific to libraries but I think libraries can learn from these stories".

Thanks for the tip, Monica!

Here is the catalog link:
http://aspen.ald.lib.co.us/search~S0?/Xmiddle+of+everywhere&SORT=D/Xmiddle+of+everywhere&SORT=D&SUBKEY=middle%20of%20everywhere/1%2C7%2C7%2CB/frameset&FF=Xmiddle+of+everywhere&SORT=D&1%2C1%2C

Denver International Program Intern

Hello, all,

ALD is very lucky to have an intern, Shakhzoda Djalalova, from Uzbekistan, (former USSR), joining the Outreach Services dept from Sept to Dec.

Shakhzoda is an English as a Second Language teacher and she will be working with our various ESL, English Conversation Circles, Family Literacy program, and more.

Please welcome her to ALD.

Cindy McFadden
Outreach Services Coordinator
303-792-8944

Simple and Easy Idea

Wish I could take credit for this idea but it goes to Padma. At the parapros conference I attended earlier this year one of the workshops I attended was on Diversity. Padma's idea was to make sure when you put up book displays to make sure the faces are cover a broad spectrum. Most of my displays are in the children's area so remembering to make sure to put books representing different cultures, ages and abilities has added a lot to the appeal of my displays.

Prisons, death row inmates and religion

In her new book, Change of Heart, Jodi Picoult gives you a book you can't put down because she raises questions that keep you thinking well into the night. Death row inmate, Shay Bourne wants to give his heart to the sister of the girl he was accused of killing. This involves the ACLU who needs to plead for him to die by hanging instead of lethal injection in order to preserve the organs. Outside the prison are all the people who believe and don't believe in the death penalty. It discusses the ins and outs of organ transplants, the ideas of salvation and forgivness, and it tests the religous beliefs of many.

Inside the prison the reader is given an amazing depiction of prison life by inmate Lucius. I found this part to be facinating. It talked about how the inmates are treated and what they think of each other, how they hide their treasures and how they spend the long hours in their cells. It discussed the things they missed the most while incarcerated and the ongoing balance between each other and their jailers.

When I attended the Para Pro conference earlier this month I did attend a breakout session talking about correctional libraries and the offenders in the system. This is a special population that many of us know little about.

Diversity Summit: Keynote Speaker Yolanda Cuesta

Yolanda Cuesta was the first keynote speaker at the Diversity Summit in Glenwood Springs this July. Her presentation was entitled It’s all about relationships and trust: Principles for long term success in serving diverse communities.
Ms. Cuesta described three major principles that are integral to serving diverse communities. The principles are below with a very brief summary for each:
1. Know your community: Learn about their work and leisure time, learn the demographics, learn who is important in the community. With immigrant communities it is important to find out what state/region (in addition to their country of origin) to better understand this group.
Conduct community interviews with prominent members of the community you serve. This will often require moving beyond library patrons. It is up to us to start the conversation with these leaders to better understand the community’s needs. This will also assist in positive word of mouth in the community.
2. Figure out how to connect with patrons’ lives: We often assume that people understand libraries and we may miss barriers of past experiences for those in the community. One way to overcome barriers could be through promoting programming that will interest the community (i.e., build on the international popularity of soccer, especially during the World Cup).
3. Respect & Value Cultures: We should understand our own culture when attempting to understand the culture of others. Through understanding our own culture, we will better see how our cultural outlook may shade or influence our understanding of others.
Again, this is a very brief overview of the speech (feel free to comment with augmentations or questions!).
To learn more about Yolanda Cuesta’s insights and strategies, check out her chapter Developing Outreach Skills in Library Staff in the ALA Editions book "From Outreach to Equity".

a special library

Recently I went on my own little field trip to a library I have been wanting to see: the Blair-Caldwell African-American Research Library, part of the Denver system. It is a beautiful new library with a special collection of materials relating to the African-American community in Denver. I enjoyed the historical exhibits on the second and third floors very much. There were great photographs showing Denver's diverse history. The library is right on the light rail line too! This is a fascinating local resource for us and our patrons too. You can see more about it via this link http://aarl.denverlibrary.org/

Senior Source

If you go into the 9 News website and look under the As Seen on dropdown menu you will find Senior Source. It's a Resource for Aging and Living Well. I contains links to all kinds of services for seniors. You can learn about volunteer opportunities, Social Security, retirement, economic stimulus package, financial planning, assisted living and nursing homes, nutrition and much more. There is a section on veterans benefits. It is brought to you by Colorado Department of Human Services and Denver Regional Council of Governments. I found it to be very informative.

A Trip To REECA Heritage Camp

July 24-27 I have visited REECA (Russian,Eastern European, Central Asian) Heritage Camp. It was a very interesting experience that has touched me personally on various levels. Colorado Heritage Camps (REECA is just one of them) are organized for the families who adopted children from various countries of Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America. My job in the camp was to tell both kids and their parents about the Russian collection at ALD, issue library cards and instruct the out-of-state campers on how to use ILL to borrow Russian language materials from our library as well as from other American libraries which have Russian language materials. I have also provided workshops on popular Russian children's games and most popular Russian kids' authors and books to the parents and volunteers of the Camp. And, of course, I told Russian stories to the kids! 12 hours of stories (6 hours per day!) to 140 kids. It was quite challenging (I even lost my voice by Sunday), but extremely rewarding, because those kids were REALLY excited about this service! I am really looking forward to go to the REECA Camp again next year and I think that Heritage Camps in general is a very good opportunity to outreach to diverse populations.

Passport to Russia

Hi all,

In Sept. the Smoky Hill Library is presenting a program called Passport to Russia for kids aged 5-11. If anyone has a suggestion for a game that can be played inside that would be great. I would also like to pull some good fiction books (picture or chapter) that have a Russian characters I'll share the list when it's done but again I am open to suggestions.

Thanks,
Erin

Diversity Summit July 2008

What a wonderful gathering of librarians from all corners of the state. The 3 keynote speakers are leaders in their own right. Yolanda Cuesta is a consultant who helps libraries serve diverse communities; Maureen O'Connor is Director of Library Services at the Queens Public Library, the most diverse county in the USA; Juana Bordas is president of a company that focuses on diversity and leadership. All are dynamic speakers, willing to share their experiences! I am re-writing my notes and ready to start implementing a few new ideas. Handouts from the interesting workshops can be found on: http://diversityconnects.wetpaint.com/

Brief Article on Library Services to Diverse and

Here is a link to a brief article regarding Library Services to Diverse and Special Populations on the Colorado Department of Education Web site. It contains several links that look interesting.

http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdelib/librarydiversity.htm

Michele Whitley, CW

Arapahoe County Council on Aging

ACCoA was organized in 1975 as the official spokesman for the county's older population and to represent agencies and organizations serving older people. It was founded as a result of the Older Americans Act of 1965 as amended.

The mission of this council is to identify the needs, concerns, and issues of older adults (60) years of age and older in Arapahoe County and to plan, advise and advocate for services which will best meet these needs; by enlisting, encouraging and cooperating and coordinating within the community.

This group meets the 4th Monday of each month at the Greenwood Village City Hall from 1-2:30 PM. The next meeting is July 28, 2008.

Quarterly Meeting Notes

Notes from the Special Populations first quarterly meeting are posted at:

Z>AST>Interest Groups>Special Populations

new juvenile fiction

hello, all,
I've been working on a brief list of new multicultural books for children in grades 3-5. One book I just finished is called Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate. It's about a boy named Kek who just arrived in Minnesota from Sudan and the many challenges he faces. It's written in very simple language to express the way he is learning to speak English. At one point he asks his aunt if she is glad to be in America. This is her reply:
"The freedom is a great gift,
She says. To choose your leaders.
To walk the streets unafraid.
But it's lonely here.
And...she hesitates. Hard.
To change when you are older,
To learn new words and new ways,
That is big work."

That seemed to sum up so much.

Quarterly Meeting

Hello, all,

We had a successful first Quarterly meeting thanks to all who came and to Katya and Richard for faciliating the group.

Be watching for updates on this blog.

A reminder to all that it is the expectation that you view and post at least once per month.

I look forward to working with all of you and to getting to know you better.

Have a great summer.

Cindy McFadden
Outreach Services Coordinator

Queens Library

One of the best websites serving multicultural populations is the Queens Library site. It not only has additional access points available in English, Russian, French, Spanish, Chinese and Korean, but their catalog is searchable in these languages. They also provide a really cool tool called WorldLinQ Home which provides valuable resources in several languages.

The Colorado State Library and Special Population Resources

The Colorado State Library website is a great resource for learning more about special populations in Colorado libraries. The site contains a list of promising practices, a diversity toolkit, useful links, news about upcoming events and much more.

http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdelib/librarydiversity.htm

Richard Lyda
Outreach Services Librarian
Arapahoe Library District

Welcome to Special Populations Interest Group

Welcome to the Special Populations Interest Group

The Arapahoe Library District serves many Special Populations throughout its District. Our Library patrons include Bookmobile patrons at Neighborhood and Senior Stops, the Homebound and Older Adults, Jail patrons at the Arapahoe County Detention Center, our diverse and multicultural patrons at all of these locations and at our area libraries, our English as a Second Language student patrons, English Conversation Circles patrons, our Spanish language collection patrons and our Russian language collection patrons, and more.

This Special Populations Interest Group is a forum for you to share your successes and to get district wide networking help with your concerns.

Welcome and I look forward to working with each of you.

Cindy McFadden
Outreach Services Coordinator
303-792-8999, ext 12603