Competency C

Recognize the social, cultural and economic dimensions of information use

Public libraries may be available to open to the public, but that doesn't mean their information is equally available to or equally used by everyone. There are a number of factors that influence information use, including a person's social and cultural background, as well as economic standing. These factors can effect individuals as well as groups, and libraries need to be aware of the social, cultural, and economic dimensions of their demographic and how these factors influence their information use.

Social

Social factors can be things such as the predominant job types of the community, age groups, or general education levels of the population. These factors all influence what a person is looking for when they come to the library. For example, a library in a college town would need to provide access to academic journals and scholarly resources such as encyclopedias, while a library in a farming community might focus more of its collection on agriculture.

Age can affect the part of the library a patron uses, such as preferring the children's, young adult, or adult collections. A library that is located near a seniors' center might find its collection of large-type books gets a lot of circulation, for example. Teenagers and college students also tend to have different habits of computer use than adults, and a library near a school might need a different set-up and rules for its computer stations. A large population of children might mean the library needs designated computer stations for children separate from the main computers.

Cultural

There can be many different cultures within a single city. Extreme examples of this would be cities that have places like Chinatown, Japantown, or Little Italy, but even small cultural groups can have a big impact on public services such as libraries. For instance, there may be a significant portion of the demographic that does not speak English as their native language. This can mean that libraries need to stock foreign-language materials, as well as English-language learning materials. Information items such as flyers, signs, or the Web site may need to be available in more than one language as well. In addition to language, different cultures often have different rules of behavior, which can impact how they use public institutions. For libraries to effectively serve their communities, they need to be aware of these differences and should find ways to accommodate them.

Economic

Economics also plays a large role in the way people seek and use information. For example, a young person from an affluent family is likely to have more leisure time to devote to pursuing interests and hobbies, as opposed to a young person who has to work in addition to attending school. Likewise, someone who has a computer and internet connection in their home will make less use of the library computers than someone who cannot afford these luxuries. People in lower economic brackets would also be more likely to make use of free services such as income tax assistance or legal advice. Libraries need to be aware of the economic diversity in their areas in order to target the services they offer.

The first piece of evidence is observational study I did of the main branch of the Livermore public library. In order to get perspective for our observations we did background research to find out the library's likely demographic. There are several social factors I discovered, including the fact that the main branch is located next to a seniors' center and down the street from one of the high schools. Livermore also has two major kinds of professions, the science and engineering jobs from the two national laboratories, and the more rural horticulture and agriculture. Both kinds of jobs have an influence on information needs, which is most clearly reflected in the kinds of periodicals the library provides.

Something else I found was that while over 81% of the population identifies as caucasian, there is a significant (14.4%) hispanic population as well. What I didn't know at the time was the distribution of the hispanic population. While the main branch gets a number of Spanish-speaking patrons, and has a large collection of Spanish-language materials, the largest concentration of hispanic neighborhoods is closer to one of the smaller branches, Rincon. As a result, the majority of Rincon's signs and flyers are bilingual, and their collection has the greatest variety of Spanish-language materials.

The second piece of evidence is a mock memo to a superior I did for my information organizations and management class. The scenario I chose was a request for a re-allotment of the budget for Spanish-language materials. In this hypothetical situation, statistics showed that hispanic middle school and high school students outnumber both hispanic elementary school students and hispanic adults, and the memo is a request for an increase in the amount of funds alloted to Spanish-language young adult materials. This is an example of how the cultural demographic can influence a library's collection.