PD:DIVERSITY

I interviewed Chris Taylor the Branch Librarian of the Special Needs Library at Nerang on the Gold Coast.  We spoke about the program the library provides once a month which is open to all ages, however the children are mostly in the 2 to 10 year’s age group. It is based on a theme, for example animals or seasons. Resources are used from the Special Needs collection for this program. Concurrently, a speech pathologist engages with parent and child during play and activities to instruct and assist. The major benefits Chris highlighted was that it provides a social benefit for the children with special needs as well as the general community sees and interacts with people with disabilities in library spaces. This promotes awareness, understanding and engagement with people with disabilities. By running these vital programs to serve our plurality of society and providing opportunities for social participation, libraries are directly contributing to Australian society as a whole.

The activity was relevant to professional practice because facilitating equity and social justice is a fundamental cornerstone of Information Services. In 2009, four million people in Australia were reported as having a disability. Of all Australians with a disability in 2009, 290,000 (7.2%) were children aged 0-14 years (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012).  In order to facilitate social inclusion, Information professionals and the libraries they work for should be aware of the community demographics and how we can best meet the needs of the community.

The gaps in my knowledge were filled by conducting this interview, in that I was able to see a collaborative program in action to benefit a vital part of our community. The special needs library has an advisory group of local therapists and disability workers. They advise on purchase of resources and refer customers to the service. The benefits of the collaboration are that a community hub is established for special needs groups to have access to therapists and organisations such as Autism Australia.

The Disability Standards (2009) acknowledge that forms of disability may include physical, intellectual, psychiatric, sensory, neurological and learning disabilities.  Because of this, it is important that the library is able to recognise people living with disability have fundamentally diverse needs.  These include, but not limited to areas such as adaptive technologies, access to a variety of resources, provision of an inclusive environment and equitable access to facilities as well as physical equipment. It can be argued, equitable access is a right that should be extended to every member of society.  This is supported and expressed by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), “the right of people with a disability to equitable access to information through all library and information services...” (ALIA, 2011).  The advantages of enabling social inclusion provide the opportunity for other community members to accept people with disabilities, create library support and generate opportunities for staff development (Barker, 2011, p.15).  To illustrate at Nerang Special Needs Library at the Gold Coast, the library aim to improve social and community skills of people with special needs.  This is achieved by facilitating access to targeted resources, programs and providing life skills experience by using the library facilities in an  inclusive environment (Taylor, 2013, personal communication).

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics.(2012). Australian social trends (No.4102.0). Canberra:Author.

Barker, D. (2011). On the outside looking in: Public Libraries Serving Young People with disabilities, Aplis, 24(1), 9-16.

Library & Information Services for people with a disability. (ALIA). (2011). Retrieved from http://www.alia.org.au/policies/disabilities

National Disability Strategy-Community consultations and submissions report .(2009) .Retrieved from, http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/disability/pubs/policy/community_consult/Pages/default.aspx