Scholarly Review

“[Sociocultural consciousness] challenges future information professionals to expand their sociocultural consciousness, by which this author means an understanding that people’s way of thinking, behaving, and being are deeply influenced by such factors as race/ethnicity, social class, and language. Without this insight, information professionals are unable to cross the sociocultural boundaries that separate too many of them from their patrons.” (Abdullahi, 2007)

I think this quote sums up why I chose to take this class. I grew up in the south, the mountains of Virginia, and while I was an undergraduate at Virginia Tech I got a job working at the Virginia Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine Library. I applied to the job simply because I wanted to work, and while there I discovered that I loved being a librarian. Another discovery I made was that so many different people use libraries.

My town had a local library, of course, but the Vet Med Library I worked in had a completely different set of patrons. The town library had mostly middle class people who had lived in the area several years, at least. They usually knew what they wanted in the library, as they had been there often enough before. And frequently they had children, some of whom I worked with when I helped with the library’s summer reading program as a teenager.

The Veterinary Medicine Library had an entirely different culture in and of itself. These people were well educated, studious, and busy. They came from many different backgrounds: Asians, Europeans, Hispanics, Indians, and Africans. It was a much more diverse work setting and I really enjoyed working with these people. I liked figuring out how to speak to them so that we could truly communicate, as not all of had English as their first language. I liked it when they’d tell me a bit about their background as I was helping them, such as where they are from and what it was like in their home country.

I took this class because I wanted to understand all of these cultures better, especially the Hispanic culture as the Hispanic population is on the rise in the United States and I’d truly love to reach out to them and make them feel welcome. I want to know more about all of these cultures! I want to know how to reach them, how to best teach them and how to make them love libraries as much as I do.

I know that’s a tall order for any class, but that is still my goal in this class: to get to know and understand as many different cultures as I can so that I can help patrons of all backgrounds. Libraries are free to be utilized by anyone. I’d love to learn how to make libraries more accessible to people from all cultures.




Abdullahi, I. (2007). Diversity and intercultural issues in library and information science (LIS) education. New Library World, 108(9/10), 453-459.