Village Reading Survey
This survey was undertaken as a first step in the process of understanding the role and impact of the new Yupukari Public Library (YPL) in its community, to
1) provide a baseline, however tentative, on reading and information-seeking habits of villagers early in the life of the library, prior to the installation of the Internet connection;
2) teach the library staff one feasible method of tracking YPL's development;
3) inculcate the principle of conscious professional practice;
4) publicize YPL's existence and its services to the village at large, by means of the home visits required to broadly administer the survey;
5) inform decision-making in a number of areas, including collection development and outreach.
The survey was written in English by three people: by Alice Layton and the the two YPL librarian trainees, Cindy Lawrence and Eleanor Dorrick (both eighteen-year-old natives of Yupukari), following an open discussion about our patrons and potential patrons.
We generated fifteen questions in the first go-round, in November 2005, which were handwritten into two loose-leaf notebooks, one assigned to each trainee. They both expressed uncertainty and shyness about administering the questionnaire (an unprecedented activity), so I suggested that they try it out on a few family members or friends in a spoken Makushi translation and report back as to how it went. (Makushi has been written down, but the people who can read and write it proficiently are few, and do not include the trainees.)
After a few days they returned, and we discussed the handful of results, which led to some minor rewording and the addition of two new questions, numbers 7 and 8. They then set off, on foot, motorbike and bicycle, to canvass all 72 Yupukari households as well as the 22 households of satellite communities Fly Hill and Quatata, targeting one or both heads of household who could be found at home. Seventy-seven households were interviewed, a response rate of 82%. There were 97 respondents.
No claims are being made for the evidentiary value of the data — all the typical weaknesses of survey data are present. The value of the exercise was really as a learning process: for me as library manager feeling my way toward practitioner-research in this setting; for the trainees in their professional awareness and development; for the patron cohort as a consciousness-raising activity. That said, the information gleaned is not worthless, and has already been applied in two ways.
The importance of the Health Centre as a source of information was marked: 83% of respondents cited it as their main source, a somewhat shocking finding, since the Health Centre has no information in it other than what can be provided by its minimally trained personnel and their two reference works, written in a level of English pitched too high for most villagers, including the health workers themselves. (The Health Centre also houses the village ham radio, but we failed to ask if it was the radio people had in mind when they cite the Health Centre as a preferred source.)
When the opportunity arose, some months after the survey, to assign tasks to a volunteer who is a recently-certified R.N., I explained the survey result to her and introduced her to the Community Health Worker. Together they designed an "info wall." Fabric wall pockets, similar to those sometimes used to hang up shoes, but larger in size, were produced by the village Sewing Group, and hung on a wall inside the Health Centre. Each pocket contains illustrated brochures in simple English addressing a common village health problem: burns, vomiting, skin infections, and the like. These two dozen brochures were written by the volunteer with local reading levels and style of English in mind, and are stored in a database at the public library so that more copies can be generated (on the library copy machine) as needed, and so that the text can be adjusted as required.
In addition to generating the info wall project, the survey has impacted collection development decision-making, first by confirming the overwhelming preference for fiction, which was specified 63 times out of 129 responses (or 49%) to Question 14: "What kind of books would you like to find there?"(in the library) and 77 times out of 147 responses to Question 11 (52%) "What kind of books would you like to have?"(at home). The next most requested categories were for books on health and on indigenous people, followed by a range of applied art and science topics, from cooking and farming to crafts and sewing.
The self-reported needs for information reinforce this data, since the most needed kind of information cited is agriculture, followed by crafts, cooking, sewing, farming and carpentry. Interestingly, the most common answer to this question, after "agriculture" is "none": many respondents do not cite a need for information, which may circle back to the finding that fiction is most desired. Perhaps recreation is one of the greatest unmet needs.
It is also noteworthy that the need for health information was seventh in the list; either the Health Centre is meeting community needs (which runs counter to prevailing village gossip), or other needs are more pressing (which is also not my impression); this is a somewhat mysterious result when compared to the comparatively high interest in health books at the library and in the home.
The top self-reported training needs affirm the information needs data, in that the most desired kinds of training are cooking, agriculture, sewing, crafts, carpentry, computer and farming. This question also elicited the second-most popular answer of "none," perhaps from the same respondents who answered "none" above, although this has not yet been correlated.
We have been collecting works about indigenous people and a variety of crafts already, but the library collection is weak in the other cited topics, which can now be addressed thanks to the survey. The survey results have also helped us to communicate our collection needs to book donors.
We found that 15% of respondents do not read at all. Of these, 80% are female, average age 37, median age 36. Natural follow-up questions, such as "would you be interested in reading lessons?" or, "would you like to listen to English language books on tape?" were not asked. In other words it is not clear whether the difficulty with reading is a function of low English comprehension or of illiteracy (since reading is by definition a second-language activity for Makushi speakers).
Another missed opportunity for follow-up questions was the response to Question 9, "do you have books in your house?" From anecdotal reports, villagers who own books often own only one book, a bible given them by a missionary. Next time we should try to get more specific about how many books are owned, and of what type.
Overall this was a useful exercise for all involved, deriving some thought-provoking data for me (and for me to share), a positive professional experience for the trainees, and needed public relations for a new village resource. The Internet was introduced to YPL in early February 2006; books are being read in situ and checked out; puzzles, games and videos appear to be YPL's most popular items: there is a lot more for us to learn about our users, our nonusers, and practitioner-research. But at least now we have a way to begin to look at that picture over time.