Assess and respond to the needs of diverse communities.

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It is important to consider how we can meet the needs of the community. Spending time learning what the community needs are by talking with community organizations and leaders, going to the places where people that do not usually frequent the library may be and speaking with people about how the library can meet their needs is important. Libraries periodically conduct surveys that are either online or can be filled out at the library, however some people you are trying to reach out to may either not come to the library or not feel comfortable filling out the survey. Also, it may take time to create relationships and trust to get to the point of having a meaningful conversation about what the community needs are and how a partnership can be created to address those needs. There may be some groups that have a mistrust of institutions and need to find out what your goals and intentions are. There may be others that do not realize that there are any benefits to coming to the library so it may take some time to learn how you can add value to the community in order to reach certain groups of people. Finding out how you can remove barriers and create an environment that provides services and programs that can help people from all walks of life, despite ability, access, culture, language and life circumstances. The article points out that the aboriginal populations of Australia have experienced barriers at the public library that create an unwelcoming and difficult to access both online and in person. The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) has worked to include and support indigenous peoples work toward  more culturally responsive services. This movement toward responding to the needs of diverse communities also required libraries to reconsider how indigenous artifacts were acquired, displayed and interpreted that they may have in their collections as they may be offensive and traumatic for indigenous people. Including all people of the community to be a part of every aspect of the library from acquisitions, policy development to program delivery, we could create a more welcoming and responsive library environment to diverse communities (Thorpe & Galassi, 2018).

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In keeping with these principles, the Collection Management website, the interactive literacy game and the interactive literacy app were designed for computer literate patrons in mind. The app and the game were designed as a way to educate children but in a game enviroment and the collection management website was designed for students seeking authoritative and current STEM course or career exploration resources . The presentations highlighted are examples of slideshow presentations that are intended for professionals or patrons to help remove barriers whether they are service, design and architectural barriers or possibly concerns of confidentiality or disclosing sensitive medical concerns and issues while seeking health and medical resources. The other works listed are all relavant to the goal of responding to the diverse needs of the community, whether it is in the ALA's policies for people with disabilities, marketing to students, developing a collection management plan specifiaclly for students in the STEM fields, or developing learning objectives for the literacy app and games they are all intened to meet the specific needs of different people, ages and backgrounds to engage them in the information seeking process.

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Thorpe, K., & Galassi, M. (2018). Diversity, inclusion & respect: embedding indigenous

priorities in public library services. Public Library Quarterly, 37(2), 180–194. Retrieved on November 7, 2020 from https://doi.org/10.1080/01616846.2018.1460568