For more than one hundred years libraries in America have worked in one way or another to include services aimed at ethnic groups, at first mainly in the way of assisting the newly immigrated to become assimilated to mainstream American culture through help in learning English, with basic reading/writing skills, and assistance with social services and applications for citizenship (Rubin, 2004, p. 292). However, it wasn’t until the 1960’s that the importance of community representation in libraries and their staffs came to the forefront of discussions of library policies and practices. Finally, in 1970 the ALA’s Social Responsibilities Round Table was formed, and, following that the establishment of such groups as REFORMA (advocating for the Hispanic community), the Black Caucus, and others. A key focus of many of these groups has been the recruitment and retention of library staff that more accurately represents the increasingly diverse nature of the populations they serve. Unfortunately, this effort to diversify the library workforce has not yet been successful, as exemplified in Grob’s statistics, “About 25 percent of the American population is other than white, but among academic librarians only 13 percent are a race other than white, and among RBMS members only 3 percent are a race other than white ” (2003, p.77) How then might librarians who do not have the cultural and perhaps linguistic background of the population they’re serving accurately assess and prioritize the selection, presentation,
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