A Focus Group’s Feedback

-- Library Journal, 10/1/2006

As the Saint Paul Public Library (SPPL) approached its strategic planning, it held a number of focus groups with community members. The city has undergone significant cultural changes in recent years, and it was important to engage the stakeholders who are members of new and diverse communities. Here’s what we heard from one interview group, which included a recent Russian immigrant, an education manager of Mexican heritage, a Somali immigrant and job counselor, an African American social services worker, a community involvement coordinator from the American Indian Family Center, and a Laotian American working at a social and cultural agency serving the Hmong community. Others at the table included library outreach staff, a representative from the Minnesota Literacy Consortium, and a staff member from the Friends who oversees community projects. PROVIDENCE’s Laura Isenstein and Luis Herrera, director of the San Francisco Public Library, facilitated the group discussion.

The group was asked to describe the greatest needs in their community that the SPPL could potentially address. Answers were wide-ranging, diverse, and often at odds with one another. Some of the issues that emerged included the rapidly expanding Chicano population, the Somali community’s need for access to information, parent-child conflicts among recent immigrant groups, the need to connect with one’s own culture, access to English language materials and American culture, and the need for high-quality after-school programs. Members of the African American and Native Indian communities stressed that their youth were in crisis, with children described as “miniature adults living in survival mode.”

Participants emphasized the need for the library to coordinate with public schools but also to partner with the parks and recreation department, daycare facilities, social service agencies, and literacy providers to address the needs of children and youth in Saint Paul’s multi-faceted communities.

The facilitators followed up with a number of additional questions: “What are the biggest challenges facing the library to meeting your community’s needs? What are major concerns surrounding funding of programs? What should the library not do? In your work, what is the most critical element for the library to serve all the residents of Saint Paul?” The responses, reflected in the participant’s comments, encompassed many of the opportunities and challenges facing the SPPL in the coming years:

• Parents don’t understand the library. The key is getting parents to use the library.
• Keep the library safe. For latchkey kids, age 12 and up, there’s no place to go after school.
• The library’s homework centers are short on time, staff, and space.
• Don’t be a childcare provider.
• Somali is an oral culture, and many people don’t understand how important a piece of paper is.
• The library needs to know how to communicate differently with each community.
• Because of welfare time limits, many immigrants face harder job challenges.
• Get materials in other languages. Encourage reading in different languages.
• Translation is not always best. Very few people read Hmong, so English is better when printed.
• Meet our intellectual needs.
• Make the library go down the road of community involvement and service.
• The community is hungry to come to the library. You need to tell them how.