The Expanding Role of Public Libraries in Tribal Settings: From Traditional Services to (Advanced) Digital Skills, Citizen Engagement, and Innovation

Abstract

This paper presents a case study of Ignacio Community Library (ICL) on the Southern Ute Indian Tribe Reservation (Colorado) to show how public libraries in tribal settings currently contribute to their communities and whether such context influences these contributions. Based on existing literature and a dozen in-depth interviews, we find that ICL meets various needs and empowers citizens with (advanced) digital skills to use (emerging) technologies for specific purposes and also to innovate. Further, ICL expands opportunities for active citizen engagement in public affairs. These contributions align with local priorities and demonstrate how unique local circumstances affect specific ICL’s contributions.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 6 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.