By Diantha D. Schull and Selma Thomas
This article was published in Museum News July/August 2006.
When high-school student Adam Humiecki, 17, interviewed 84-year-old Richard Beyal for an oral history project focusing on Native American childhood, the teenager was stunned to learn of the hardships Beyal had faced as a child. A Navajo resident of Phoenix, “Richard was orphaned on the reservation,” wrote Adam in his report, which is now part of the permanent collection of Phoenix’s Heard Museum. “In order to be fed, he had to do a lot of work, herding sheep, doing chores. He compared it to slavery, because the only way they would want you was for the work.”
Adam and other teenagers taking part in the project began to see the world through the eyes of older adults. “I learned that the elder I interviewed held onto her ties and her culture even after she moved to the city,” said one young woman. “It was interesting that she lived in both worlds, in a way.”
The teenagers were able to cross generational and cultural divides thanks to Reading America, a multi-year program of Libraries for the Future, a division of the Americans for Libraries Council. Since 2002, Reading America has funded 45 library-community collaborations, all involving a series of activities designed to promote intergenerational and intercultural communication. At least 10 communities—including those in Phoenix; Timber Lake, S.Dak.; and Biloxi, Miss.—developed dynamic museum-library collaborations that led to innovative uses of staff, resources and collections. By recognizing their shared civic and educational goals, museums and libraries have expanded outreach, leveraged resources and developed meaningful and lasting partnerships.
In South Dakota, the Reading America project “established a new type of partnership between the Timber Lake historical society, the library and the school,” said teacher and society trustee Greg Garon. “It also provided a time for our area adults and youth to engage in a meaningful dialogue that was of mutual benefit.” In Mississippi, the West Biloxi Public Library joined with local museums to break down the walls between teenage boys and the adults in their lives, leading to what Project Coordinator Deborah Lundy described as “a meeting of the minds across generations.” The museum-library collaboration in Phoenix helped Adam Humiecki and other teenagers document and disseminate the childhood experiences of local Native Americans and develop new relationships with elders in their community.
Reading America
The Americans for Libraries Council (ALC) is a national nonprofit that champions the role of libraries in American life and promotes new approaches to sustaining libraries in the 21st century. In 2001, the MetLife Foundation asked staff at Libraries for the Future, ALC’s program arm, to consider how public libraries might address the widening gap between teens and older generations. The gap seemed especially wide in communities with high immigration, where teens adapt to their new culture and language more quickly than their elders.
“We knew that libraries could jumpstart conversations,” said Elissa Young, Reading America’s national director. “But to succeed they’d need the assistance and support of other community organizations, including museums, schools or refugee resettlement organizations. We also recognized that programs involving teens and adults are no easy matter. Our challenge was to build a basic Reading America program that would appeal to all generations while remaining flexible enough to accommodate differences in types of libraries, community partners and participant backgrounds.” The MetLife Foundation agreed to fund Reading America, awarding a $5,000 grant to each of the final collaborative projects.
By the time Libraries for the Future sent out the first request for proposals in 2002, the program’s three main components had come into focus. Projects had to be intergenerational. They had to be multicultural. And they had to involve a partnership between the library and a community institution such as a school, a place of worship, an immigrant aid society or a museum. Museums with a local focus seemed an especially promising fit, since the projects would focus on the history or culture of a community group. In addition, the institutional benefits were particularly attractive to museums.
Each project is anchored in an intergenerational book and film discussion that helps participants speak to each other about topics of cultural relevance. Those discussions lead to broader cultural-exchange projects ranging from oral-history interviews and family scrapbooks to community gatherings and providing insights and mementos for individual participants. The participating institutions see tangible outcomes, too: attracting new users, expanding their collections to reflect local contemporary culture and working with new partners to reach mutual civic and educational goals. The results have been as varied and rich as the communities served by Reading America.
Oral History in South Dakota
Timber Lake, S.Dak., boasts unusual cultural diversity and historic interest. The small community on the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Indian Reservation includes residents with Norwegian, German, Polish, Irish, Native American, British, Canadian and French backgrounds. Local sites of interest included a former coal mine, a one-room school house, a remote church and the homestead of author Laura Ingalls Wilder. But Timber Lake’s young people were mostly unaware of the area’s rich heritage and rarely interacted with the elders who knew the community’s stories.
Five students in a seventh-grade problem-solving class came up with a plan to spark intergenerational conversations among the local residents. The school district could work with the Timberlake and Area Historical Society and the Dewey County Library, the students said, to take teenagers and senior citizens on visits to historic sites in the area. Bringing elders and students together at local sites of interest would prompt the telling of stories, allowing the adults to share their own backgrounds and tapping students’ natural curiosity. Greg Garon and fellow teacher Jae White added details to the plan, including assigning the library the role of research; organizing support, meeting space and reading recommendations; and asking the historical society to facilitate access to the sites and the staff who worked there.
Dialogues between the students and the “living historians” energized such historic themes as life on the prairie, the influence of railroads, the history of agriculture and the growth of industry. The students developed special interests in specific themes. “The coal mine was my favorite site,” noted a seventh-grader. “We learned the most information and I got to take some coal home, too.” The students gained an awareness of the cultural history of the area and a deeper understanding of the life experiences of their older neighbors. “Listening to people’s memories on the trips gave me a perspective that you cannot get from a history textbook,” said one student, “and helped me to see small details that make the history much more personal.”
The seventh-graders videotaped the conversations, guided by high-school students, and developed historical context with help from teachers, librarians, and historical society staff. The resulting video is now part of the collections of the society, county library and school library. Over the course of the year, project leaders Garon and White developed additional activities to reinforce the field trips, including oral history interviews, book discussions and a summer reading program.
“Although students had visited exhibits and events at the local museum, this project brought the relationship between the school and the historical society closer because of its scope,” said Garon. “There were many hours of interaction between students and historical society members that would not have happened if it were not for the oral-history program.”
Timber Lake’s oral-history project is now in its second year; the participating students, now eighth graders, meet regularly with historians, artists, authors and other experts to learn more about the rich Native American and immigrant frontier history. In addition, the students, their parents and other community adults are taking part in an intergenerational book discussion series featuring local authors at the public library.
The three-way collaboration gave both students and institutions a “great educational benefit,” concluded White. Students “were exposed to many elements of education that would not normally be present,” including real-life situations and hands-on learning experiences that will have an impact on the way they will learn and think in the future. The project also touched residents throughout the community. “Many individuals are now asking what and when is the next activity for the community oral history program,” said Garon. “This program has become too valuable for all of us, and we do not believe it is time to quit.” Ideas for the future include ongoing student-adult book discussions at the library and exhibits developed by students and elders at the historical society.
Art as an Expression of Life in Biloxi
Teenage boys are often resistant to learning anything from history books or the adults in their lives. But the Biloxi, Miss., Reading America project succeeded in its goal to help 15 at-risk boys between the ages of 10 and 14 understand their own connections to local cultures and histories. Called “Art as an Expression of Life,” the collaboration between the West Biloxi Public Library and the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art, among other organizations, combined museum and library resources to encourage young people and their parents and caregivers to imagine alternatives to their vision for the future.
A key challenge the library and museum faced was just getting the attention of the target group. “We realize this age group is hard to attract,” acknowledged Project Coordinator Deborah Lundy. “Many do not see the benefit of reading. Books, newspapers and magazines are not part of their daily lives. We are using art as a non-threatening method of getting this group interested in their community and stimulating them to use the library. Through role models, both historical figures and current local artists; visits to area museums and discussions and design activities, we are introducing project participants to a wide variety of art forms.”
Those role models included Pleasant Reed, who was born into slavery and settled with his family along the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the early 1880s. The home he built is a central piece of the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art, whose African-American gallery is dedicated to exploring the city’s black history. Touring Reed’s hand-built home and the museum collections showed how local residents both resisted adversity and found ways to express themselves through art. In addition, touring the collection of works by “mad potter” George Ohr and learning about his role in Biloxi’s cultural development introduced the teenagers to an important local enterprise: pottery-making.
Art exploration was another aspect of “Art as an Expression of Life.” The library tied presentations and demonstrations by artists and designers from the Mississippi Gulf Coast area to art-related books and films and provided opportunities for drawing, storytelling and computer design. Topics included pottery-making; book illustration, led by a local children’s author; jewelry making; storytelling; Gulf Coast art; museum wildlife exhibits; book production; photography; and the design of cars, boats and bikes.
“The exploring phase of the project is important,” said Lundy, “because many schools in the Biloxi area do not provide this avenue in their curriculum.” The experience of making art and exposure to books, films and artists helped draw both teens and their parents into discussions about their dreams and future plans. Ultimately, the project created a link between local families and the region’s cultural resources, including museums, the library and local artists. “Art as an Expression of Life,” said Lundy, provided “a common meeting ground” for everyone who participated.
From the Reservation to the City
Amid a strikingly diverse population, Native Americans comprise one of the largest cultural groups in the area served by the Central Branch of the Phoenix Public Library. But although more than 2,400 Native Americans reside within the city limits and the local Inter-Tribal Council of Phoenix is located near the Century Branch, Native Americans as a group were infrequent users of the library. The public library system’s Community Vision states that Phoenix is a city that uses “diversity as an asset.” But at the Century Branch, reaching out to Native American adults proved to be a challenge.
In contrast, teenagers of all backgrounds eagerly participated in the branch’s various activities and events. These included a teen council, a summer reading program, Teen Read Week and a wide variety of activities designed to engage Anglo, Hispanic and Native American young people—from multicultural performing arts festivals to an annual program called “Meet the World of the First People@Your Library.”
To leverage its success with teenage users, the library designed a Reading America project in which young people served as “cultural ambassadors to the Native American community,” according to branch librarian Mary Sagar. The project also sought to bridge the gap between local Native Americans between the ages of 40 and 100 and the city’s growing population of young people between the ages of 14 and 18. Recruiting the teens was easy; they were avid library users. To recruit the older group, the library partnered with the Inter-Tribal Council and the local Area Agency on Aging, which serves Native American seniors at the Phoenix Native American Community Health Center. The final team comprised 11 teen interviewers and nine older Native American interviewees, representing seven tribes.
Three museums joined the Phoenix project along the way, offering a range of resources and expertise. The Arizona Historical Society provided a consultant who served as trainer/facilitator for the teen interviewers, offering sessions on diversity, oral-history interviewing techniques and indexing and editing. The curator of anthropology at the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, Ariz., helped plan the final oral-history presentations at the library.
During the interviews, the teens asked the seniors about their experiences as children on the reservation and how they came to move to the city. Many of the adults provided photographs and spent long hours with the teens reminiscing and comparing their younger years to their lives today. As one 17-year-old noted, “a witness to the events is a better source of information than a book that is 100 years old.”
“The most positive aspect of the program has been in the relationship-building between the teens and the seniors,” said Sagar. “As you can imagine, the seniors led very interesting lives. One of the elders interviewed had an uncle who was a medicine man. She told the story of how he got his medicines. Through these personal histories the kids gained quite a bit of historical perspective.”
After conducting background research at the library, the teens worked on their projects individually, under the direction of library staff, and then as a team with staff to create the final multimedia presentation. A large audience of community members attended the presentation, which took place at the Century Branch in November 2002, coinciding with National Indian Heritage Month. It was so successful the teens were invited to repeat it for librarians from all 12 branches of the Phoenix Public Library and distribute it to other libraries and community groups in the state. The Heard Museum also requested a copy for its own collection.
In the meantime, the project’s influence resonates beyond the library and museum doors. “Some of the teens and seniors have formed friendships,” said Sagar. “These relationships are ongoing, with some teens planning to volunteer at the senior center on a regular basis and some simply dropping in to share lunch with their older friends.”
It’s About the Community
The partnerships in Timber Lake, West Biloxi and Phoenix led to multiple outcomes that benefited organizers and participants alike, including rich and varied learning opportunities for project participants; new skills in collaborative planning and resource sharing for staff; and exposure to local cultural institutions for newcomers to the area and underserved audiences. Each partnership helped its diverse constituencies forge a new sense of community and civic engagement. Seeking a better understanding of their shared heritage, the teenagers in Timber Lake initiated a project that explored the history and culture of their small town. Likewise, the oral historians in Phoenix stepped across the divides of race and age to learn more about their city’s history, and the young men participating in the Biloxi project gained a new sense of hometown pride.
Old and young gained new insights into social and cultural differences, acquired a new appreciation of place and culture and enjoyed new intergenerational friendships. In essence, people became better neighbors, learning to recognize their similarities and appreciate their differences. “A project like this can have a major impact,” said Timber Lake’s Greg Garon. “It creates a positive attitude between youth and elders, stimulates students and adults to listen and learn from one another, and provides an opportunity for adults to come together for a common goal other than the usual funeral or wedding.”
The partnerships have created better institutional neighbors, too. The museums and libraries that forged Reading America partnerships pooled their resources to develop new projects and attract new audiences. Externally, each organization adapted to new users and played a more visible role in the civic life of its community. Internally, participating museums and libraries could point to educational outcomes and improved institutional efficiencies. Most have promised to continue the partnerships through such activities as joint marketing and digital initiatives, thus prompting innovation while trimming costs. Perhaps most compelling, the institutional partnerships offered creative challenges to professionals who sought to step beyond their own institutional walls and expand their competencies, their audiences and the resources and possibilities within their reach.
Diantha D. Schull is president, Americans for Libraries Council, New York. Selma Thomas is president, Watertown Productions, Washington, D.C. For more information about Reading America, please go to www.lff.org
