"True community: connecting the Millennium Development Goals to public library services in the United States"
SUSAN MARAT
Information, Society and Justice Volume 4 number 2. pp. 29-55.
Abstract:
U.S. public libraries have the potential to actively participate in realizing the collective vision of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). While public libraries in the United States utilize measurement tools to plan socially responsive services and programs to address poverty and literacy in their communities, these initiatives are not connected to MDG targets and indicators. Similarly, scorecards and quality of life reports compiled by municipalities and nonprofit groups, while they might investigate community social problems are not linked to socially responsive library services or the wider MDGs. This article suggests that by re-imagining data collection methods coupled with active community partnership, U.S.public libraries have a significant role in actualizing the MDGs in terms of working local social conditions by the deadline of 2015.
Keywords: capacity building, human rights, public libraries, Millennium Development Goals, measures, planning, partnerships, United States
