Mi Biblioteca Es... Inclusiva

The Manhattan-Elwood Public Library applied for the My Library Is... Grant to furnish our new branch with a curated selection of Spanish titles and resources for the community. Our library district serves the villages of Manhattan, Elwood, and Jackson Township in the south suburbs. In 2023-24, we renovated a small, vacant building in the downtown area of Elwood, IL and created an 1,800 square foot library branch for this community.  

Elwood is a village of around 2,200 people including 300 K-8 students, about 16.4% of whom speak a language other than English and 27.8% of the students are Hispanic per the Illinois State School Report Cards. Until recently, the residents of Elwood would have to travel to Manhattan, an 8+ mile commute with no public transportation, to use the library and its resources. This distance made it impossible for many of the students in Elwood School to utilize the library. Furthermore, until the new library branch opened, the only place for school-age students to go in town was school and local parks, which are not completely feasible in the winter months. Establishing a small branch in Elwood gives kids another location for free learning, a safe space, and a fun atmosphere. This location also gives the rest of the community a place to congregate, use resources, print, read, and search the Internet which no other place in town provides.  

Planning and curating materials for a branch this small proved a bit challenging. With the help of our Outreach Coordinator and Programming Coordinators and their close working relationships with the school in Elwood, we knew there was an upward trend in Spanish speaking families and students, and this was a segment of our population that needed more resources. Using funding provided by RAILS for the My Library Is... Grant, our team set out to create a list of print materials, games, and online resources we could circulate at this new branch.  We chose various titles including picture books, board books, early learning books, and adult books for our selection. In total we were able to purchase 105 titles with this grant. We decided that we needed a marketplace shelf for our Spanish materials to be displayed indefinitely in this new branch. We were also able to obtain online resources such as Mango, Little Pim, EBSCO Spanish and Portuguese subscriptions, and Hispanic Life in America which allows patrons to explore over 700 bilingual publications from NewsBank. By expanding our collection to include diverse languages and inclusive materials, we are expanding our reach to more communities, more patrons, and more early learners. We plan on continuing to expand our foreign language collection and provide resources for the community by creating learning kits that patrons can check out, continuing to provide free e-resources, and plan for bilingual programming.   

Libraries can continue to be inclusive and diverse spaces by attending community events, coordinating with local schools and day care centers, and learning more about what the community wants, needs, and lacks. By gathering community information on a regular basis and using it to curate your library offerings, you can expand your reach to more community members and make a positive impact on your community.  ¡Vamos a la biblioteca! 

This blog post was written by Marcy Juarez, Manhattan-Elwood Public Library.   

This project was made possible by the My Library Is... Grant.