Rethinking Illiteracy

I’ve been gathering my thoughts thus far in a notebook (actually in a couple of random notebooks), so it is probably past time for me to get organized and write some of this stuff down in a coherent, cohesive format.  Already my concept of research, especially the type of research we will find most useful as librarians/information specialists/media specialists/etc., has been altered by the content we’ve encountered so far.  I began this semester thinking of “research” as exploring online databases, narrowing down keywords, using truncation and wildcards and all that other good stuff, with the ultimate goal of locating information that already exists.  These are great skills to have, but “real world” research is not necessarily about finding the data that already exists, but about collecting the data that has not been collected and answering the questions that have not yet been answered.

As my understanding of the material has begun to come together, so has my research proposal begun to take shape.  I started with the desire to research some aspect of literacy within libraries – obviously a very broad topic.  Efforts to teach literacy in libraries and schools are already well documented.  The problem of adult illiteracy has been looked at from just about every angle possible – as a class issue, a race issue, an immigrant issue, a fault of our education system, and so on.  I have no desire to complete the same research someone else has already done, so I have been brainstorming to come up with a different angle.

Public library systems often make great efforts to teach adult literacy classes, as well as adult computer literacy, information literacy, media literacy and the like.  These are good and high-minded endeavors, but I have found myself thinking about how adults who are unable to read must feel upon stepping into a public library.  The first step to being able to reduce adult illiteracy is to get illiterate people to step through the front door.  This must be an incredibly intimidating action for most of them.  Let’s face it, libraries don’t exactly cater to the comforts of people who are unable to read. 

I found an interesting piece by Jennifer Cram called “Potential Unexploited: Public Libraries and Adult Literacy” that I think I will use as a base for my research theory.  Cram says that libraries and librarians have the mindset of catering to “Homo Typographia, Typographic Man, a kind of sophisticated subspecies of Homo Sapiens.” (Progressive Librarian, no. 18, p. 40).  This means that libraries view illiteracy largely as something undesirable that cannot be tolerated and needs to be corrected.  The materials that libraries do offer which illiterate or non-literate users could take advantage of are offered on the premise that they are being offered for those too young to read, for those with visual impairment, for those who can read but perhaps want to listen to a book on CD or tape in their car, for those just learning to read, etc.  What Cram is saying, and what I agree with, is that libraries really only treat illiteracy as a temporary issue that can, and should, be rectified.  Hence, libraries do not cater to the needs of the illiterate as a permanent minority group, as they do other minority groups such as the elderly and the handicapped.  I think, however, it is important to recognize that there are illiterate adults who will never learn to read, or who may not even feel it is something they want to do.  This does not mean they deserve to be ignored as a population with special needs.

With this theory in mind, my research would pick one community as a case study and seek to answer questions such as:

                What is the percentage of illiterate/aliterate/non-literate adults in a community?

                How many of these adults use the library compared with attendance by other minority groups?

What information sources does a typical library system offer that can be used by the illiterate/aliterate/non-literate population?

What are the views of library staff, library users, and library benefactors/donors toward illiterate users?

How do illiterate users view the availability of materials that they can use in the library?

What steps can be taken to be more welcoming to this minority group?

Thanks for reading - more to come.