Most members of the Washington Library Association are proud of the service traditions of U.S. public, academic, and school libraries: open-stack browsing of materials, open catalogs of materials, access for all community members, reference service to answer all sorts of questions from all sorts of patrons, defense of intellectual freedom. We are proud to read stories about individuals who found knowledge, support, and comfort in libraries. Unfortunately, though, the sad fact is that throughout our history, some people have been excluded from library service, because of race, ethnicity, language, condition of being institutionalized, reading ability, or just where they lived.
Today, our hope is to provide library service for all members of our communities. But are we prepared to do so? What if potential clients’ most fluent language is not English? What if they are unfamiliar with the concepts or values of U.S. libraries? What if library patrons are very poor, so poor that they don’t have homes or ability to attend to basic hygiene? What if potential library users are in prison or jail? What if they live in a rural area, far from library facilities? And how can primarily print-oriented libraries serve communities with cultural traditions that are primarily oral, rather than primarily written? What changes do we need to make, in our services, our facilities, our collections, our assumptions, and ourselves, in order to serve a diverse library clientele, a clientele that includes many kinds of differences?
Alki Editor: Carolynne Myall
Alki Editorial Committee: Sue Anderson Kathleen Ardrey, Chair; Tami Echavarria; Cheryl Farabee; Nancy Huling; Eva-Maria Lusk; Carla McLean; David Hurley, intern; Cameron Johnson, asst. editor, Cathy Brownell, Link editor
