February 11, 2008 (CHICAGO) -- Public library strategies that help communities successfully welcome New Americans are explored in a new publication from the Urban Libraries Council (ULC). Aimed at senior municipal, county, foundation and library leaders, Welcome, Stranger: Public Libraries Build the Global Village examines successful library outreach at work across the country, and its impact on communities.

“As immigration continues at a near-record pace in cities of all sizes, the public library becomes an ever more important asset in helping settle new residents,” said Martín Gómez, ULC President.“Welcome, Stranger is a guide to finding the areas in which libraries can make a difference and identifying programs that turn ideas into action.”

Welcome, Stranger uses the work of Brookings Institution researcher Audrey Singer as its framework. Singer has identified five broad strategies for successful immigrant inclusion and community adaptation, which are defined in Welcome, Stranger. Readers are shown how these strategies can be translated as public library outreach and programming. Each section includes a variety of real-world examples from ULC member libraries and additional cases that can be adapted based on local context.

Welcome Stranger explores:

• Libraries’ central role in the collection of formal and informal data on settlement patterns and needs of immigrants and refugees in their communities.  Libraries are on the front lines of their neighborhoods, gathering information directly from those in need of services.  This is especially true in cities that have not been traditional immigrant destinations.  As an information clearinghouse, libraries can build more effective programs in-house, and also provide vital feedback to other community service agencies that can shape and enhance outreach to immigrants.   
  
  
• Libraries’ innovations in promoting their services through welcoming signage, websites, collections, and provision of basic services in the first languages of their new residents, making the library more usable and more effective.
  
  
• Libraries as leaders in building English capacity, the most important factor in immigrants’ chances for success.  
  
  
• Libraries’ roles as key conduits to other local agencies and support institutions, improving opportunities for work, education, health services and housing.  
  
  
• Libraries as jump-starts to civic engagement through their encouragement of community inclusion and newcomer participation. Authors Rick J. Ashton and Danielle Patrick Milam, both of ULC note, “Using their historic role as strong, unbiased public spaces, dedicated to learning and exploration, they [libraries] are fostering public discussion of the challenges faced by both newcomers and the communities receiving them.”

“It’s clear that the public library has an important and vital role to play in providing essential library services as well as directing immigrants to resources in their new communities,” said Mr. Gómez.  “ULC has a part to play, too.  Through Welcome, Stranger we’re ensuring that any library, any city has access to both inspiration and practical guidance for welcoming our newest Americans.”
 
Print editions of “Welcome, Stranger: Public Libraries Build the Global Village” will be mailed to ULC members in February.  For a free download or to read it online, click here. 

About the Urban Libraries Council
For more than 30 years the Urban Libraries Council (ULC) has worked to strengthen public libraries as an essential part of urban life.  A membership organization of North America’s premier public library systems and the corporations that serve them, ULC serves as a forum for sharing best practices resulting from targeted research, education and forecasting.  ULC’s programs are acclaimed for inspiring new organizational models that invigorate urban libraries and enrich the areas surrounding them.  ULC is headquartered in Chicago.  For more information, visit the group on the Web at www.urbanlibraries.org.