Proposal for 2005 SIG USE Symposium

Rebecca Pressman

Proposal for 2005 SIG USE Symposium

My name is Rebecca Pressman. I wholeheartedlyidentify with the theme of linking theory and practice because I have a PhD in library studies and work full-time as a reference librarianand am constantly trying to connect these two worlds.

I nominate low-income people as a “special population” which should be discussed at the 2005 SIG USE Symposium. The category “low-income people” includes people who receive “welfare” (TANF or general assistance) or work full-time or part-time at jobs that pay the minimum wage.

Chatman’s work with low-income workers (1991) and her theory of Information Poverty (1996) are central studies in understanding the information behavior of low income people. Spink and Cole (2001) and Hersberger (2002/2003) have built on Chatman and Devin’sbody of work. The ongoing studies of the “digital divide” and McClure and Bertot‘s studies of Internet access in public libraries provide data about where and how many low income people use the Internet to seek information.

Myinterest in this population comes from working as a reference librarian at the RutgersUniversity library located in Newark, New Jersey. Although we are an academic library, the demographics of Newark, our location, our mission to serve the community, our public access Internet terminals and our no restrictions Internet access policy means that low income people use our library; I help low income people with their information needs every day and also observe their information seeking frequently throughuse of the Internet. My observations make me interested as a researcher in the use of the Internet generally by low income people as a way of seeking information and the role of electronic mail particularly as a way of giving and seeking information. What are the effects of this access, even if limited?

As a practitioner, I find serving this special population to be a challenge and would welcome ideas on how theory could improve my practice. On the professional level, the American Library Association’s Policy 61, adopted in 1990, requires that library services be accessible and useful to low-income patrons. The development of “best practices” through this symposium would be very useful to the library community.

References

American Library Association. (n.d.) Policy 61. Library Services for Poor People. Retrieved July 30, 2005 from

Chatman, E.A. (1991). Life in a small world: Application of gratification theory to information-seeking behavior. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 42, 438-449.

Chatman, E. A. (1996). The impoverished world of outsiders. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 47, 83-92.

Hersberger, J. (2002/2003). Are the economically poor information poor? Does the digital divide affect the homeless and access to information? The CanadianJournal of Information and Library Science, 27(3), 45-63.

Spink, A. & Cole, C. (2001). Information and poverty: information-seeking channels used by African American low-income households. Library & Information Science Research, 23, 45-65.