Community Histories and Library Literacies: Examining Librarian Practices Toward Community-Informed Early Literacy Programming

• In Event: Pursuing the Ideal: In Search of Equitable Early Learning Practices in Public Libraries

Abstract

Objectives and Perspectives:
This study considers the ways librarians understand the community they serve and build early literacy programs with those notions in mind. It emerges from previous library scholarship that details the ways library programs support the learning and literacy practices of the children that pass through their doors (Bastiansen & Wharton, 2015; Campana et al. 2018; Nelson, 2017; Neuman & Celano, 2012; Ralli & Payne, 2016). Crucially, it expands this work to ask how librarians navigate the ways community histories and hegemonic inequities impact ways people interact with their spaces (Horning, 2015; Kranich, 2020; Neuman & Celano, 2012; Schement, 2001). The goal of this research is to begin to identify the intentional practices librarians use to build early childhood programs, share community histories to enhance those practices, and see what resonates with the parents and children that attend them. This study merges two fields that while aligned in many ways, don’t significantly interact in scholarship. This study expands upon the stated library research beyond its focus on school-based literacy practices like reading and acknowledges theories in multiliteracy (Gee, 1991; Street, 1995; New London Group, 1996; Wohlwend, 2011) that understand literacies as ways of being and knowing in the world. Furthermore, this study affirms that, within the library, young people make meaning through co-constructed live action texts (Wargo & Alvarado 2020; Thiel 2015). Library practitioners are doing this work in valuable ways, this study affirms that while also considering concrete ways to deepen those practices to better serve the children that pass through their branches.
Understanding Community Histories:
In line with principal research questions and previous literacy scholarship, this study will be framed as an ethnographic case study. An ethnographic case study supports my desire to understand the relationships and contexts that inform the literacy practices that emerge within the library (Dyson & Genishi 2005). Particularly, ethnographic case study is both bounded and supports a deep look into community histories, people, and practices (Coe et al 2021; Yin 2018). A significant portion of the data collection will include archival research to explore the history of the library branch and its community. Beyond archival research, data collected included interviews with librarians and parents with their children and observations within the library.
Results and Significance:

Throughout the summer, librarians create programs for the children that arrive in their children’s area. They build relationships with families and facilitate relationships between parents, their children and the other parents and children that come to early childhood programs. The programs they build center play and joy in concert with early literacy learning. The community archival research expanded their understanding of who might not be attending programs and broadened their notion of community and community outreach.

Author

• Latrice Ferguson, University of Pennsylvania