Towards better information services: A framework for immigrant information needs and library services

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2019.101000Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A systematic investigation of immigrant information needs and library services to better address their needs.

  • Personal social networks, the Internet, media sources, and institutions are the main information sources.

  • Immigrants face many challenges to obtain information such as language, cultural differences, and digital divide.

  • Libraries provide services to immigrants, such as information sources, free computers, and Internet access.

  • A unified framework is proposed to guide libraries and other information service agencies to serve immigrants.

Abstract

Immigrants are among the populations in modern society that libraries are striving to serve. This study aims to develop a framework on immigrants, their information needs, and library services. Using a systematic literature review based on the grounded theory approach, 28 related articles were reviewed to identify the causes, characteristics, and the content of the information needs of immigrants. Also explored were the possible sources to satisfy these information needs and the barriers to accessing needed information. Findings indicate that personal social networks, the Internet, media sources, and institutions are the main information sources for immigrants; language, cultural differences, the digital divide, unfamiliar information systems, and psychological factors are the five major challenges for immigrants obtaining information. Based on the findings, a unified framework about immigrants, their information needs, sources to satisfy those needs, and library information services is, therefore, proposed. This framework may provide guidance for libraries and other information service agencies to better develop services and information systems for immigrants.

Introduction

Between 1990 and 2017, the number of international migrants, or immigrants, worldwide rose by over 105 million with an estimated total of 258 million international migrants in 2017 (United Nations, 2017). Immigrants have become a significant faction in modern society and cannot be ignored by information service providers, such as governments and libraries (Shields, Drolet, & Valenzuela, 2016).

Immigrants have different types of information needs when they arrive in a new country, such as housing, health, jobs, and education. If their information needs are not met, the process of integrating immigrants into a new society will become more difficult and frustrating (Caidi & Allard, 2005; Sirikul & Dorner, 2016), which may lead to further social exclusion. Warschauer (2002) discussed the harm of social exclusion to those who are excluded and the broader impact on society as well as the economy. Immigrant information needs tend to be personal and also evolve with the changing lives of immigrants. These require that information agencies or organizations, such as libraries, provide customized assistance and services that could satisfy those information needs, as indicated by Wang (2012), Berger (2002), and others.

According to Buckland, libraries are “social and cultural institutions with specific processes, practices, and interaction with information and its users” (Buckland, 1988, Buckland, 1992). Libraries have a long history of serving immigrants. Library collections and active services in the past 100 years have been part of nationwide efforts to address the needs of immigrants (Cuban, 2007). For example, many public libraries offer services on acculturation, citizenship, and practical information evaluation and selection (Pokorny, 2003; Shepherd, Petrillo, & Wilson, 2018). American Library Association (ALA) Public Programs Office published “The New Americans Library Project,” which explored how the public libraries serve more than 43 million immigrants, who make up 13% of the United States’' population. ALA also published “Library Programs and New Americans: A White Paper” to help public libraries provide services for immigrants in June 2019. The White Paper provides nine recommendations for library staff to help libraries improve library services to meet immigration needs (Flinner, Norlander, Nock, Brucker, & Welch, 2019). The development of library services specifically for immigrants has often reflected the changing practices of librarians to meet the needs of these newcomers trying to adjust to their new lives in their new country.

Section snippets

Problem statement

Although extensive studies have emphasized the importance of understanding information needs and barriers for immigrants migrating from different countries and regions, no such understanding has been achieved. Consequently, immigrants often may not receive information services and other services that could have been provided to them. Also, a lack of such understanding may negatively impact the directions and quality of services provided to immigrants. Even though libraries have long provided

Literature review

A number of studies have been conducted to understand the needs of immigration information (Atiso, Kammer, & Adkins, 2018; Caidi & Allard, 2005; Khoir, Du, & Koronios, 2015; Shoham & Strauss, 2007). Most of the research used questionnaires, interviews, case studies, and other methods to investigate the information needs of immigrants. These studies not only help researchers obtain first-hand data, but also provide a basis for the research in this paper. Most of these studies, however, focused

Methodology

A five stage systematic literature review process, as illustrated in Fig. 1, was used to identify appropriate literature for the study and to answer the research questions. The five stages include: 1) the definition of literature inclusion and exclusion criteria; 2) a literature search in academic databases; 3) data screening/data selection; 4) an analysis of the selected articles and, 5) the presentation of findings. These stages are explained in more detail below.

Results

This section presents in detail the results of the analysis of the 28 studies on immigrant information needs and library services for immigrants. Specifically, the codes are listed in Table 1.

Answers to the research questions

The first question, what are the information needs of immigrants identified in the literature? has been well studied in the literature with different classification approaches. The information needs of immigrants could be better understood by integration with the immigration process. In other words, immigrants have different types of needs at different stages. In the immediate stage, immigrants urgently need to obtain information related to survival, such as shelter, food, clothing, work,

Summary and conclusion

This paper reviews the related literature on immigrant information needs and library services combining a systematic literature review with the grounded theory approach. Twenty-eight papers have been identified and analyzed to determine the information needs and barriers to immigrant use of libraries, and how information providers, such as libraries, can meet the information needs of immigrants. Based on the results of the analysis, this study proposed a framework that can address immigrant

Acknowledgments

This study is supported by the China Scholarship Council.

Chunying Wang is a doctoral student at the School of Information Management, Wuhan University, China. She was also a visiting scholar at the University of North Texas in 2019. Her research interests are information access, information services, and open data. Her research has been published in The Electronic Library, Proceedings of the iConference, and the Proceedings of the Association for Information Science & Technology.

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    Chunying Wang is a doctoral student at the School of Information Management, Wuhan University, China. She was also a visiting scholar at the University of North Texas in 2019. Her research interests are information access, information services, and open data. Her research has been published in The Electronic Library, Proceedings of the iConference, and the Proceedings of the Association for Information Science & Technology.

    Ruhua Huang is a professor and the Associate Dean at the School of Information Management, Wuhan University, China. She holds a Ph.D. in library and information sciences from Wuhan University. Her research focuses on information organization and retrieval, information services, open access, and information literacy instruction. She has published in The Electronic Library, Library Hi Tech, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Journal of Library Science in China, Journal of the China Society for Scientific and Technical Information, and other journals.

    Jiyuan Li is a master's student in the Department of Information Science at the University of North Texas. His research interests include data science, information services, and information management.

    Jiangping Chen is a professor and Chair of the Department of Information Science at the University of North Texas. She earned a Ph.D. in information transfer from Syracuse University. Her research interests include digital libraries, information retrieval and access, data science, and information systems design. Her research has been published in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Information Sciences, ASLIB Journal of Information Management, The Electronic Library, and other journals.

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