Dayton, both the city and the region, has lost population since the collapse of auto manufacturing in the area over the past two decades. At the same time, the area finds a growing population including professionals, college students, immigrants and refugees from throughout the world. The immigrant populations include those with and without legal status. Language, education and job skills vary widely. The city's Welcome Dayton project sets aside political considerations to encourage immigrant achievement in life skills, formal education, and entrepreneurship. The goal is to build a community welcoming to all, including longtime residents and our newer neighbors. Challenges include language and transportation barriers, and varying levels of available social services. A great opportunity exists in our regional interest in building connections between immigrants and existing communities. The City of Dayton took up the challenge and embraced the opportunity, and the Dayton Metro Library has remained a successful and engaged collaborator.

A group of city leaders,education and social service professionals--including the Library--led an early initiative to have the Matricula Consular accepted by governments and businesses as legal identification. The Matricula is a document issued by the Mexican Consulate to Mexican citizens living outside their country. It allows a Mexican citizen to have a form of official identification from his/her home country, but has no bearing on legal immigration status. The Board of Trustees for the Library was the first public entity in the county to recognize the Matricula for library card purposes. Further steps in the process included collection development, programming and staff development activities. We created an internal task force to build staff understanding of immigrant service needs, developed bilingual collections and programming, and began serving on area wide committees dedicated to successful integration and growth of our international residents into the Miami Valley community. Library staff hold leadership positions on the Welcome Dayton Committee and Latino Connection. We worked with Catholic Social Services to provide language instruction and a local connection for the emerging Bhutanese immigrant community. We partnered with K-12 Art Gallery to bring immigrant artists to branch libraries for interactive family programs. We were selected by the State Department for visits by international education professionals as an example of excellence in providing services to emerging populations. Each month, Catholic Social Services comes to the Main Library with a group of recent refugees. A librarian greets the group, talks about the library, registers participants for library cards. After a library tour, the Dayton Police give a brief talk on how they are there to help and assist refugees with their transition to Dayton.

We continue to build trust and engagement with our refugee and immigrant communities. Local agencies serving these populations are coming to us with ideas for collaboration, such as the Bhutanese language classes and the Main Library tours. We are increasing demand for services from new immigrants, demonstrated by requests for card applications and other materials in Spanish, Turkish, Swahili and Arabic. Library staff have been invited to speak about the program to the Dayton City Commission, and are noted as key partners in the city's Welcome Dayton publicity. Future projects include additional training for library staff, creating mini-welcome centers on a rotating basis in newly constructed branches, and further engaging our immigrant populations through participation in local events, library cultural programs, and targeted collection development.