Librarians in multicultural environment.
Problems and solutions
In the effort to fulfill their mission of disseminating information, librarians face a variety of challenges. Some of these challenges pertain to collection development, technical services, cataloging backlogs, and the handling of new technologies. Other challenges are related to legal issues and intellectual freedom, such as material objections and Internet access. Library management has dealt with these challenges for years by updating the technology, increasing the staff, and educating employees and customers. Effective communication poses a different and important challenge to librarians, especially to reference librarians.The communication between reference librarians and library customers is difficult to a point that librarians need to use special communication tools to be able to deliver the best service. The United States is one of the countries where librarians, in general, and academic librarians, in particular, are more prone to deal with multicultural customers. This can make their job even more difficult. Does the communication in multicultural environments create a real problem for libraries? Does the library management need to intervene in order to solve these problems? Alternatively, should management leave this issue to the individual librarians to educate themselves and overcome this challenge?
What is culture? The answers to this question reveals the complexity of its meaning. Every field of knowledge has its own answer: philosophers, anthropologists, historians, and economists have their own concepts of culture. (Kluckhohn, 19) One suggested answer is: “The behavioral norms that a group of people, at a certain time...
... middle of paper ...
...ences
Axtell, R. E. (1995). Do's and taboos around the world. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Bartlett, J., & Kaplan, J. (1992). Bartlett's familiar quotations (16th ed.). Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Elashmawi, F., & Harris, P. R. (1993). Multicultural management: New skills for global support. Huston: Gulf Publishing Company.
Engholm, C. (1991). When business east meets business west. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Kluckhuhn, C. (1962). Culture and behavior. New York: The Free Press.
Morrison, T., Conaway, W. A., & Borden, G. A. (1994). Kiss, bow, or shake hands. Holbrook: Bob Adams, Inc.
Radlovic, M. (1956). Etiquette & protocol. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.
Sarkodie-Mensah, K. (1992). Dealing with international students in a multicultural era. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 18(4), 214-216.
Giger (2013) defines culture as a response in behavior that is shaped over time by values, beliefs, norms and practices shared by members of one's cultural group. A person's culture influences most aspects of his or her life including beliefs, conduct, perceptions, emotions, language, diet, body image, and attitudes about illness and pain (He...
Gabriel (2010) gave a simple definition of diversity by stating “diversity implies the ability to incorporate variety within a group” (p. 149). The group that is discussed in this paper deals with recruitment on a diverse level in reference to gender, age and the minority. Wheeler (2008) added into defining diversity as well by stating “one must produce his or her own definition of diversity by examining one’s background and personal issues and how they comport with one’s perceptions of and attitudes toward people of color” (p. 21). This goes to show as a librarian or future librarian, you have to self-evaluate your personal issues and work on being able to build a working relationsh...
Stoner, C., & Russell-Chapin, L (1997). Creating a culture of diversity management: moving from awareness to action. University of California. Retrieved April 8, 2005 from University of Phoenix, InfoTrac
Bartlett, John. Famous Quotations Fourteenth Edition. Ed. Emily Morison Beck. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1968: 641-644.
Culture has been defined numerous ways throughout history. Throughout chapter three of, You May Ask Yourself, by Dalton Conley, the term “culture” is defined and supported numerous times by various groups of people. One may say that culture can be defined as a set of beliefs (excluding instinctual ones), traditions, and practices; however not all groups of people believe culture has the same set of values.
Culture by definition is the set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices, as well as customary beliefs, social forms and material traits that characterize a racial, religious or ...
What is culture? Many people ask themselves this question every day. The more you think about it the more confusing it is. Sometimes you start leaning to a culture and then people tell you you’re wrong
Cultures are infinitely complex. Culture, as Spradley (1979) defines it, is "the acquired knowledge that people use to interpret experiences and generate social behavior" (p. 5). Spradley's emphasizes that culture involves the use of knowledge. While some aspects of culture can be neatly arranged into categories and quantified with numbers and statistics, much of culture is encoded in schema, or ways of thinking (Levinson & Ember, 1996, p. 418). In order to accurately understand a culture, one must apply the correct schema and make inferences which parallel those made my natives. Spradley suggests that culture is not merely a cognitive map of beliefs and behaviors that can be objectively charted; rather, it is a set of map-making skills through which cultural behaviors, customs, language, and artifacts must be plotted (p. 7). This definition of culture offers insight into ...
Brett, J., Behfar, K. & Kern, M. (2006) ‘Managing multicultural teams’, Harvard Business Review, 84 (11), pp.84-91, Business Source Premier [online].
Clifford Geertz once said: “Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is.” I recently spent a short amount of time at a busy 5-way traffic circle near my residence. While sitting in one spot for about 25 minutes, I observed many people doing many different things (mainly driving). Observing the various people made me think of what their particular cultures may have been, and from there, I began thinking of culture in and of itself. What is culture? Culture is defined as: Ideas and behaviors that are learned and transmitted. Nongenetic means of adaptation (Park, 2008). Culture plays a vital role in anthropology. After all, anthropology is the holistic, scientific study of humankind (Park, 2008). One cannot study humans as a whole without studying and understanding their cultures as well.
The Giant Book of American Quotations. Carruth, Gorton and Ehrlich, Eugene. Portland House. New York. 1988.
Banks, J., and McGee, C. A. (Eds.). (1989). Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Culture is the totality of learned, socially transmitted customs, knowledge, material objects and behavior. It includes the ideas, value, customs and artifacts of a group of people (Schaefer, 2002). Culture is a pattern of human activities and the symbols that give these activities significance. It is what people eat, how they dress, beliefs they hold and activities they engage in. It is the totality of the way of life evolved by a people in their attempts to meet the challenges of living in their environment, which gives order and meaning to their social, political, economic, aesthetic and religious norms and modes of organization thus distinguishing people from their neighbors.
The term “culture” refers to the complex accumulation of knowledge, folklore, language, rules, rituals, habits, lifestyles, attitudes, beliefs, and customs that link and provide a general identity to a group of people. Cultures take a long time to develop. There are many things that establish identity give meaning to life, define what one becomes, and how one should behave.
Journal of Social Research & Policy, 4(1), 77-92. Roux, J. L. (2002). "The Species of a Species." Effective Educators are Culturally Competent Communicators. Intercultural Education, 13(1), 37-47.