Susan K. Burke
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The United States has experienced increased immigration rates since 1990 and public libraries are faced with providing services to immigrants from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. Which immigrants are the most likely to utilize public library services? This study uses data from the U.S. Current Population Survey from 2002 to compare households of immigrants from various world regions on the use of public libraries in the past month and the past year. Immigrant households’ rates of library use are also compared to households of native-born U.S. citizens.
American public libraries have a long history of service to the foreign-born. While today’s immigrants have much in common in terms of library needs with immigrants from earlier periods, the demographic character of newcomers to this country has changed substantially. For example, one hundred years ago immigrants were predominately European. Today’s immigrants are much more likely to be from Latin America and Asia.1 Immigration rates have increased since 1990. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, in 2000 immigrants were more than 11% of the U.S. population for the first time since 1930.2 By 2004 there were 34.2 million foreign-born residents in the United States, or 12% of the population.3 In addition to immigrants themselves, the 2000 census showed that fully 20% of K–12 students were children of immigrants.4 It is undeniable that these numbers of immigrants are having and will continue to have a significant impact on U.S. institutions such as public libraries.
How are public libraries serving such diverse populations? Materials in languages other than English, bilingual and bicultural staff members, literacy instruction, and English-as-a-second-language courses are some of the more common strategies. In addition, libraries can partner with federal Americanization agencies. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has had vendor booths at American Library Association Annual Conferences to promote naturalization and citizenship materials for public libraries. Federal outreach to immigrants through public libraries dates back at least to the World War I era.5
Library Use Studies
There have been many studies on characteristics of public library users and nonusers. Lawrence White stated that at least fifty such studies have been conducted since the 1930s. Douglas Zweizig and Brenda Dervin focused on sixteen studies that they identified as truly comparable.6 In their analysis of these studies, Zweizig and Dervin concluded that 10–23.5% of U.S. adults use the public library at least once a month, and 21–64% at least once a year.7 Most of the studies examined demographic variables as predictors of library use. Of these, education level was consistently the strongest predictor. Socioeconomic variables such as income and occupation were weak predictors, and age was curvilinear (use increased with age to a certain point then decreased). Sex, race, and marital status were not important predictors.8 Judith Payne found that the presence of school-aged children and the education process were strong reasons for library use.9 Carol Kronus identified family size and county size as influential.10 Some researchers found nondemographic variables such as attitudes and habits were better predictors of library use than demographic variables.11
Library Use By Immigrants
Studies have also been done on immigrants’ use of public libraries. These generally focused on immigrants from specific geographic regions and located in particular areas of the United States. Most studies of immigrant library users concern Latino immigrants. While the professional literature contains a wide variety of articles detailing experiences of or suggestions for serving immigrant populations, only those providing numerical or statistical data are reviewed here.
Around 1990, Amado Padilla used a focus group to gather perceptions from Latino immigrants in East Palo Alto, California. Only four of the Latinos in the group had used a California library. Padilla did not state the total group size, so it is not possible to determine what proportion this represents. None of the Latinos had used a library in their native country.12
Susan Luevano-Molina did a qualitative study on fifty Latino, predominately Mexican, immigrants in Santa Ana, California in 1996. She found these immigrants to have high awareness of libraries in their home countries and in the United States, with half (48%) having used non–U.S. libraries. About half (50%) had also used a public library in Santa Ana. Even 33% of undocumented immigrants in this study had valid library cards. Luevano-Molina reported that in Santa Ana the Latino community considered the library neutral ground where even undocumented immigrants can seek to improve themselves and obtain materials for their children.13 For respondents in this study, having school-aged children was the best predictor of library use. In a later book chapter, Luevano-Molina cites a report from the Institute for the Future from 1996 that states that Hispanics and Asians are California’s heaviest public library users.14
Ninfa Trejo interviewed fifteen families in Arizona in 1996; ten were immigrant Latino families, three were Mexican Americans, and two were white families. In total, seventy-one family members, twenty-six of whom were adults, were interviewed. Only one person of the seventy-one had never used the library, and time since last use of the library ranged from zero to thirty years. The average length of time since last use of the library was two and a half years. All of the families stated that they used the public library, and half of the families had library cards.15
In 2000, the State Library of North Carolina commissioned a study on the library needs of Hispanics living in North Carolina. From 1,003 telephone interviews, they found that 26% of Hispanic respondents had used the public library at least monthly, with 40% reporting use in the past year. A regression analysis showed the most influential factors in library use were respondent’s belief that he or she lived close to a library, those who rated their English-reading skills more highly, higher education, those that rated their English-speaking skills more highly, and those with children under eighteen years old.16
Frances Flythe found that, of seventy-one Hispanic immigrants in Durham County, North Carolina, 22% had used the library at some time.17 In a 2002 study of Latino residents in Missouri, Beth Bala and Denice Adkins conducted forty-one door-to-door interviews and found that 22% of respondents had used the library in the past six months.18 In general, these studies found that barriers to public library use by Latino immigrants included cultural unfamiliarity with libraries, language barriers due partially to low education and literacy levels, mistrust of government agencies, scheduling conflicts, location-related issues, and cultural conflicts such as silence rules.19
Concerning library use by Asian immigrants, Sherry Su and Charles Conaway interviewed a sample of 180 elderly Chinese immigrants in the Los Angeles region in 1993. Nearly two-thirds of these respondents (63.3%) reported using the library at some time in the past year, and one-fifth (19.4%) used the library more than monthly. The most common reasons for going to the library were to read materials and to borrow books.20 Padilla found that Korean immigrants were more likely to view libraries as quiet study areas, not places to obtain books and other materials. He stated that Asian immigrants were accepting of “silence” in the library because it echoed cultural traditions from their home countries.21
In a multicultural study, Cheryl Metoyer-Duran studied the information-seeking behavior of ethno-linguistic community leaders in California in 1990. She analyzed interviews of 120 leaders from Latino, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and American Indian communities. These leaders were a mix of immigrants and nonimmigrants, with most of the Chinese and Korean respondents born outside the U.S., more than half of the Latinos U.S.–born, and only three of the Japanese born abroad. In rating public libraries as an information source, Chinese (64%) and Japanese (62%) leaders were most likely to rate the library as very good or good (as opposed to average or poor). About half of Latinos (53%) and Koreans (53%) rated the public library as very good or good. As for visiting the public library in the last year, the majority of community leaders had done so: Chinese (83%), Korean (79%), Latino (79%). Japanese leaders were much less likely than other groups to have visited the public library in the past year (33%).22