Monday, April 6, 2009

Exam Review

I am going to try and summarize the video: Bridging the digital divide, focusing on spanish communities. This video attempted to inform librarians and community members about a way to try and close the digital divide between spanish speaking communities. Many great points were brought up in this video about how we can incorporate certain things in our libraries that will make the spanish speaking community feel more comfortable in the libraries.

1) You need to find out where the spanish speakers are comfortable, REACH OUT!- worship groups, houses, schools, book stores, advocacy groups...etc.
2)Make personal contact with them
3)Build trust and personal relationships with customers- spanish signs and language sections
4)Be flexible issuing library cards
5)Location of spanish materials- front and center of back in the corner? Which one?
6)Take your time with them
7)Brush up on your spanish and have bilingual employees
8)Hire spanish speakers to work in classrooms and computer labs
9)Recruit spanish speaking volunteers to help out
10)Schedule classes around work schedules
11)Consider Childcare issues
12)Set up carpools

These were the main points that I got from the video. If anyone got any others they would like to add please do so. Hopefully these will refresh your memory of what the video was about.

1 comment:

  1. Just wanted to refresh people on one specific story the video addresses that had to do with car pooling.
    At one of the local libraries computer lessons were being taught to the local hispanic popualtion. One day it rained and less than half of the class showed up. The teacher could not figure out why such a popular class' attendance had dwindled in one week. After research she found out that most of the class has to walk 2+ miles to get to the library. After working all day in the rain the students did not want to walk in more rain to the library. As a result car pools were set up so all the members coudl come to the rest of the meeting.

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