For library workers across the
country, it is a communications quandary that comes through
the turnstiles each day: how, as communities and neighborhoods
continue to diversify, to assist patrons who speak little
or no English.
For librarians in Illinois’ Lincoln Trail Libraries
System and beyond, the solution is now just a magenta placard
or a phone call away. This, thanks to a pioneering new program
that is putting patrons in touch with people who know their
language best and can connect them to the information they
need.
One part concierge desk, to two parts volunteer United Nations,
Lincoln Trail’s PolyTalk program, funded by the Illinois
State Library through IMLS's Grants to State Library Administrative
Agencies program, is the first of its kind to amass a network
of more than 100 interpreters on call any time a library worker
needs an extra hand – or voice.
PolyTalk began as an idea three years ago, when longtime
Lincoln Trail employee Joe Sciacca noticed something in his
travels that troubled him: when visiting libraries abroad,
he often had difficulty finding a librarian who could speak
English.
Similar problems abounded in American libraries, where multi-lingual
speakers made for a tough find – a particular challenge
in Illinois, where one in five residents speaks a language
other than English at home, and the state’s Latino,
Asian, and eastern European communities are its fastest growing.
“There are some people who would like to ask questions,
but if you have a mother who would like to find picture books
for her children but doesn’t know English, she doesn’t
think about going to the library to ask,” Sciacca says,
adding that many come from countries where libraries are not
public, but instead luxuries for the wealthy and intellectual
classes. “If the linguistically challenged aren’t
getting the library service they deserve, that’s not
right. We wanted to do something about that.”
Sciacca first looked into hiring a commercial interpreter
service for the Lincoln Trail system as a possible fix, but
that proved too expensive. Instead, he looked within and outward
to the community. Together with colleagues, he began posting
announcements in local libraries, at the Mortenson Center
for International Library Programs at nearby University of
Illinois, and with international student organizations.
“It proved a lot easier than we thought to find people
willing to share their language skills,” says Michelle
Ralston, project coordinator for PolyTalk.
Within a short period, library officials had recruited a
volunteer base of more than 75 interpreters, a number that
has now shot north of 100, speaking some 40 languages. While
this was happening, the Lincoln Trail PolyTalk team went to
work putting together what is now known as the PolyTalk Language
Kit: a series of laminated cards and folders that enable staffers
to engage a patron who doesn’t speak English, determine
his or her language, and get the help he or she needs.
Here’s how it works. When a patron who doesn’t
speak English walks into the library and seeks help, he is
directed to a desk where a PolyTalk-trained employee (there
are now more than 300 of them throughout the state) initiates
a conversation. Using a magenta placard listing 30 languages,
the worker asks the patron to point out his native tongue.
From there, the employee is able to pull out a series of cards
from the toolkit with basic questions and answers, as well
as an information folder about the library and the services
available. If that doesn’t work, the employee then places
an orange card on the counter explaining that an interpreter
is being found by phone.
When Sciacca and colleagues took to building their interpreter
database, they asked people to apply over the Internet, entering
their names, phone numbers and times of availability, even
down to 15-minute increments. Today, a librarian is able to
enter the language being sought into a computer and find any
number of speakers available at that given time – a
list that comprises everyone from library employees, to students,
to in one case, a Turkish couple who supply publicity materials
to the library.
“What I want these patrons to walk away with is the
notion that the library is for them too,” Sciacca says.
“There shouldn’t be a barrier there just because
their language is different. I want them to know that libraries
care about that, that we’re all about inclusion.”
That principle is now in practice in more than 165 libraries
across Illinois, many of them in small, rural, once-homogenous
communities, transformed by an influx of migrant workers.
In Arcola, for instance, one of the nation’s largest
suppliers of corn husk broom bristles, library workers have
seen their town’s demographics skew from nearly all-white
20 years ago, to 20 percent Hispanic in just a few short years.
It is a source of what Sciacca and Ralston consider many PolyTalk
success stories.
“It’s a good example of how communities change
and how libraries can change to better serve them,”
he says.
When an elderly man walked into the Ela Area Public Library
speaking only Polish, and gesturing at his shoe with a piece
of fabric and a metal ring he was holding, librarian Jennifer
Groth was able to immediate track down an interpreter by phone.
The man’s query: he was restoring his old military uniform
and looking for a local shoe repair shop. Groth was able to
direct the patron, and then call the shoe repair shop to let
them know he was coming.
“I just want them to walk out of the library feeling
like they’ve been served,” says Lincoln Trail’s
executive director Jan Ison. “I realize libraries across
the globe are different, and that people have different perceptions
based on their experience in their home countries. But we
want them to understand that libraries in this country are
safe places, where they can come not just for a book, but
also for community information.”
As for how many patrons have taken advantage of PolyTalk
thus far, that is hard to say, Sciacca concedes. Marketing
for the program has been decidedly word-of-mouth, and libraries
haven’t yet developed a reporting system to log each
time they use the toolkit or call an interpreter.
“This isn’t necessarily a service they are going
to need everyday,” Ralston says. “But when they
do, there is nothing else to replace it.”
It is a service that could be offered to a great many more
people in the coming years. In addition to the 400,000 patrons
in the Lincoln Trail system, and the public and school libraries
statewide who’ve adopted it, PolyTalk could soon make
its way into at least four other states. So far, Ison says
her system is in talks with officials in Connecticut, Nebraska,
Georgia, and Ohio about joining the PolyTalk network, themselves.
Not only would it heighten the program’s exposure, she
says, it could also dramatically expand the system’s
corps of volunteer interpreters. Library officials concede
they’re thin in some languages (Arabic among them),
and given the numbers, there isn’t always an interpreter
available at the time one is needed.
“There are 100 different languages spoken in the state
of Illinois alone,” Ison says. “Our goal would
be to get a volunteer in every one of those. But that’s
a long ways off. In the meantime, we just want to continue
to get more and more people involved, to see the kits used
in as many different ways as possible…and to see people
getting the information they need.”
Sciacca agrees.
“This is a massive volunteer project, and one of our
goals is to make sure that when the library calls, someone
is available,” he says. “A lot of this is a public
relations job; that no matter how rural some communities think
they are, we are making the point that this is for everyone.”
Word is getting out – and not just among communities
or the four states looking to adopt PolyTalk. Last year, PolyTalk
earned national recognition, as one of six programs nationwide
to win a Building Better Communities award from global library
technology giant SirsiDynix. The award recognizes libraries
for creative and enterprising uses of technology to improve
their user technologies.
Ralston sees more big things in the future, as even more
states look to add and tap into PolyTalk’s interpreter
database. There’s no reason, she says, that other states
should have to start from scratch, when there’s already
something substantial in place.
“This isn’t such an outside-the-box idea,”
Ralston says. “It’s just that within our niche,
we figured out a way to put together on a larger scale something
that just couldn’t be done locally. I kind of feel like
we’re the Verizon network in that we just keep growing,
except we’re the PolyTalk network.”
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