The public library is a place that everyone can call home. When it opens its doors to immigrants, the community can start to feel more like home to them as well. This is the idea behind a unique library-based programme being implemented. Conducted through the Multicultural Centre of Prague (MKC), Libraries for All strives to help immigrants integrate into Czech society by empowering them through information.
“The main purpose of the project is to use the library as a space for education and information for immigrants, because libraries are centres without borders,” the MKC’s Barbora Hořavová said. “Anybody can enter. Anybody can use the services.” And libraries can educate because they hold a wealth of information sources. An EU-wide programme, Libraries for All is being initiated in four countries: Austria, Sweden, Germany and the Czech Republic. On a local level, each library will conduct a variety of activities to upgrade the facility into one that welcomes people of all backgrounds, starting with the establishment of an Advisory Board of Multiculturalism, which consists of librarians and specialists on immigration. This is where the Czech Republic began when the programme started at the end of 2008.
After the board was officially set up in the beginning of 2009, MKC began planning the activities of the programme, which are slated to begin in September and October. To be held in Prague’s main library, the focus is an information point that comprises a computer centre with electronic learning; Czech language courses and a notice board with information about other classes; library events and leaflets collected from NGOs that deal specifically with immigrant issues; and a list of publications that are in both Czech and another language, as well as of books that are also available on CD. “For example, a Neruda book with the text on a CD, so one can hear and see the text at the same time,” said the MKC’s Libraries For All co-ordinator, Barbora Stralczynská. “It is a good way to learn Czech.”
Basic computer courses, including the introduction of standard programs, how to use the internet and email, and how to create a CV, will be held at the Opatov branch, in a neighbourhood where one of the city’s largest concentrations of immigrants resides. That library also plans an exhibition of paintings by the community’s foreign-born residents. In addition, all relevant library materials – for example, application forms, advice for readers and an orientation map of the library, which will help users find books in their own languages – will be translated into English, Russian, German, Ukrainian, Mongolian and Vietnamese. The chosen languages are based on the dominant immigrant populations residing in the community of each particular branch. “We participate because we want to improve services for foreign citizens and offer more,” librarian Veronika Chruščová said. “After six months we will evaluate the programme and then develop it further if it is successful, including social and cultural courses, Czech language courses for children, and the enhancement of our foreign-language book collection.”
Run by the state, municipalities and NGOs, integration programmes started appearing not long after the borders opened in 1989. Libraries For All is in part funded by European Commission money. MKC also uses the expertise of the Information Centre for Young Migrants, which mainly focuses on education assistance, and the Centre for Integration of Foreigners (CIC), which offers activities that include social counselling, employment advice, Czech-language courses and volunteering.
“There exist many different types of integration programmes, depending on the programmes’ providers and support,” CIC information and education head Vladislav Günter said. “All of them are run in relation to the Czech government’s Concept of Foreign Integration. I am convinced that the most effective are those which are complex.”
Similar library programmes have already had success in North America and in parts of Europe. At the Odense public library in Denmark, a project called We Read the Newspaper – Together brought women from ethnic minorities who knew little Danish and felt isolated from Danish society in for a series of informal meetings where they read newspapers and then discussed them. At the end of the programme’s three months, all of the women said that their Danish had improved.
Several libraries here in the Czech Republic have also begun catering to immigrants. At the Municipal Library in Cheb, staff immersed themselves in the culture of their city’s largest immigrant population, the Vietnamese, and organized lectures, debates, book fairs, food tastings, exhibitions and even a fashion show featuring ceremonial dresses. At the Prague Municipal Library’s Jírovcovo náměstí branch, an event called The World Meets in Prague 11 continues to be held and has so far featured evenings and activities focused on the Vietnamese, Ukrainians, Bulgarians and Slovaks.
The history of Libraries For All goes back further, with MKC’s involvement in two similar programmes, the first of which began in 2002. Established in response to the emerging heterogeneous population, Diversity In Libraries, a programme unique to the Czech Republic, was initially more focused on educating the majority through the distribution of a package of multicultural books to 500 libraries within the country and, in co-operation with various public libraries, holding several workshops and events geared mainly towards children. In an attempt to help libraries build their collections, the package included books on the subject of multiculturalism for university students, Vietnamese fairytales, Romani stories for children and adults, and diversity-oriented education titles.
Some of the highlights among the children’s intercultural events and workshops included readings from African and Ukrainian books, workshops for Roma and Vietnamese, and a literature and painting competition that asked children to address such questions as “Why do different cultures enrich us?” “If we know more about each other, we become a more multicultural society: a society open to different cultures,” said Hořavová, who served as the co-ordinator of the programme.
In the second year of the programme, the focus shifted more toward educating librarians on how to cope with multicultural patrons. About 300 librarians throughout the country were trained through a regional educational series called Intercultural Dialogue in Libraries. “We were able to learn about theory for the first time and also about interesting and inspiring practical examples from foreign and Czech libraries,” Třebíč library director Marie Dočkalová said.
Taking what the endeavour learned from this first programme, in 2006 MKC – in co-operation with partners from the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark – began the second phase of the series, Libraries as Gateways to the Integration of Immigrants in the EU. Gateways focused on training staff on how to make their facilities multicultural through what MKC calls the “best practices”, gleaned from similar institutions that have already been successful, and the creation of a manual serving as a guidebook, complete with practical examples.
“Libraries can tell users that they can use these materials to learn something about the Czech Republic: about Czech habits, the culture, the language. They can learn to use computers to get information about the their own population in the Czech Republic as well as about NGOs working to help immigrants,” Hořavová says. “The more information they have, the more they integrate.”
