Online Course: Connecting with Spanish-Speaking Communities

I am teaching a course on outreach to Latino and Spanish-speaking communities in March through Library Juice Academy.  The information is below.  This is a great class not only for youth services librarians, but also outreach librarians, adult services librarians, managers and even administrators who are working to make their libraries more inclusive of Latino and Spanish-speaking communities.  Please feel free to email me if you have any questions about the course: katie@connectedcommunitiesconsulting.com.

Connecting with Spanish-Speaking Communities

Description: A 4-week online course through which participants create an Outreach Plan designed to increase library use by and service to Spanish-speaking immigrant communities.  This course is designed to be most useful to organizations and staff serving communities of first-generation, Spanish-speaking immigrants and their families, particularly when organizations lack bilingual/bicultural staff.  Participants learn strategies, discover resources and develop confidence they can use to reach out to this underserved community and connect them with library services.  

Learning Objectives:

• Students will identify and select appropriately useful online and print resources available to libraries serving Latinos and Spanish-speakers.
• Students will generate strategies for building relationships between Latino community and the library, based on case studies and real-life examples of successful outreach.
• Students will identify specific barriers to library access experienced by Latino and Spanish-speaking communities and articulate specific outreach steps to remove access barriers.
• Students will apply the outreach process to their own specific organizations by identifying potential partner agencies and community leaders serving Spanish-speakers in their communities.
• Students will generate ideas for effectively marketing relevant library services to Latino and Spanish-speaking communities.
• Students incorporate this learning into the creation of an Outreach Plan for their organization.

Upcoming Session: March 1 – March 31 via Library Juice Academy.  Register at http://libraryjuiceacademy.com/032-spanish-speaking.php.   Cost is $175.