Additional Resources

Websites

Librarians' Index to the Internet

http://lii.org/

Search the word "Immigrant." The results cover quite a few immigration-related questions.

U.S. Department of Education
Office of Civil Rights

http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/ellresources.html

Social Security

http://www.socialsecurity.gov/multilanguage/index.htm

Information is available in Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Farsi, French, Greek, Haitian-Creole, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.

Medline Plus

http://www.medlineplus.org/

MedlinePlus offers extensive information about drugs, an illustrated medical encyclopedia, interactive patient tutorials, and latest health news, all based on authoritative sources, such as the National Library of Medicine (NLM), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other government agencies and health-related organizations.

American Library Association (ALA) Office for Diversity

http://www.ala.org/ala/diversity/diversity.htm

Annotated Bibliography

Espinosa, Tracey Tokuhama. Raising Multilingual Children: Foreign Language Acquisition and Children. Bergin & Garvey, 2001.

According to Espinosa, this book is for immigrants and other bilingual populations around the world and for policy makers and teachers who serve them, a group that numbers in the millions in the United States alone. Raising Multilingual Children is a concrete, well-structured approach to help parents, teachers, and caregivers navigate bilingual and multilingual development.

Green, James W. Cultural Awareness in the Human Services: A Multi-Ethnic Approach. Allyn and Bacon, 1999.

This work brings together information and recent theoretical advances in cross-cultural practice. The motivation behind this book is the idea that human service professionals can be more effective in cross-cultural settings when they (1) know something about the historical background of the communities they serve; (2) are able to develop interviewing skills that make them sensitive listeners and practitioners; (3) have a clear idea of how “race” and ethnicity are meaningful in both public life and personal experience; and (4) have tools for learning and self-evaluation that apply to any multicultural situation.

Chapters include: Race, Ethnicity, and Social Services; Help-Seeking Behavior: The Cultural Construction of Care; Method of Cross-Cultural Social Work; Language and Cross-Cultural Social Work; Cross-Cultural Problem Resolution; African Americans, Diaspora, and Survival, Native Americans in a New World; Latino Culures and Their Continuity; and Asian and Pacific Islanders. Includes Bibliography and Index. 

“Cultural competence means moving beyond the job description and learning about clients through direct observation and participation in their everyday routines in naturalistic settings” (93).

Osborne, Robin, ed. From Outreach to Equity: Innovative Models of Library Policy and Practice. American Library Association, 2004.

This ALA publication discusses new strategies for equitable service delivery. The term outreach is often used to describe library services for those who are infrequent users and nonusers of the library. This work encourages librarians to consider them as potential users. From Outreach to Equity presents successful models of library practices and policies that support equitable delivery of services in many communities across the country. The models are outcome-based and are organized by types of services that can strengthen users’ connections to information, including:

• Services outside library walls
• Outreach inside the library
• Information technology
• Technical services
• Advocacy
• Staff development

Family Language Kit Program: Connecting with Immigrant Families. Helen Benoit, Hamilton Public Library. Hamilton, Ontario.

The Multilingual Materials Acquisition Center. Ingrid Betancourt and Ina Rimpau, Multilingual Materials Acquisition Center, Newark Public Library. Newark, New Jersey.

New Americans Program: Outreach through Partnerships. Adriana Acauan Tandler, Queens Borough Public Library. Jamaica, New York.

World Language Collections: Mining Demographic Data, A. Issac Pulver, Shaker Heights Public Library. Shaker Heights, Ohio. Joan Clark, Cleveland Public Library. Cleveland, Ohio.

Proctor, Claude O.  Signing in Fourteen Languages. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2000.

Signing in Fourteen Languages contains 2,500 words organized in alphabetical order. Every word appears in American Sign Language as well as Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Romanized spellings are given for the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian words in each entry, along with the traditional non-Roman writing systems of these languages.

Articles

Green, Florence J. “Library Outreach Programs in Rural Areas.” Bookmobile and Outreach Services 5, no. 2 (2002): 15-38.

Kuharets, Irina A., Brigid A. Cahalan, and Fred J. Gitner, eds. Bridging Cultures: Ethnic Services in the Libraries of New York State. Albany, N.Y.: New York Library Association, Ethnic Services Round Table, 2001.

Pokorny, Renee E. “Library Services to Immigrants and Non-Native Speakers of English: From Our Past to Our Present.” Bookmobile and Outreach Services 6, no. 2 (2003): 21-34.

Prock, Andy. “Serving the Invisible Population: Library Outreach for Migrant Farm Workers.” Bookmobile and Outreach Services 5, no. 1 (2003): 37-51.

Selveston, Harriet. “Equity of Access for All: Serving Our Underserved Populations.” Knowledge Quest 29, no. 4 (March/April 2001): 5-6.