High Tech, Immigrant Families, and Public Libraries (Sondra Cuban)
Sondra Cuban is Professor of Adult Education at Western Washington University (Bellingham, WA). She was a researcher and teacher at Lancaster University (UK) for seven years. Her most recent book is: Deskilling Migrant Women in the Global Care Industry (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). She posted a longer version on September 15, 2013 in her blog on Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
Migrant workers have always used the public library— growing and expanding its base. Mary Antin, an author and immigration rights activist in the late 1800s crowned the library a ‘kingdom in the slum’ just as Simone, a Jamaican domestic worker, a hundred years later, said that her library made her feel like ‘a million dollars’ because of its many resources.
For over a century, public libraries have played important roles in immigrant adaptation to new places of settlement (for example assisting with job searches), celebrating cultural heritage (multicultural exhibits and resources) and language development (bringing immigrants together for ESL or bilingual