Author: Jane Garner

In a national survey of Australian public library workers that is part of a broader project about libraries and people experiencing homelessness, 397 people answered the question “Does your library issue library cards to people with no fixed address?” This is how the responses look:

26.2% (104 respondents) say they work in a public library that still requires people to have a stable home address before they are allowed to take full advantage of what those libraries can offer.… Continue reading “Library cards for people with no fixed address?”

This year I am starting a three-year project funded by the Australian Research Council that will allow me to explore how public libraries can best support people experiencing homelessness or insecure housing. The project has the following aims:

1. To understand the service, resource and environmental needs of the Australian homeless community that could be met by public libraries in our urban, regional, and remote contexts.
2. To understand the attitudes and concerns of public library staff, and non-homeless library users in Australian urban, regional, and remote contexts relating to the homeless community being present in their libraries.

… Continue reading “Public libraries supporting people experiencing homelessness”

UPDATE: The final report for this project can be accessed via the State Library of New South Wales website at: https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/public-library-services/first-language-reading

The State Library of New South Wales has funded a current research project where I am investigating the experience of reading in first-language for Australians whose first language is not English. I am exploring how it feels to read in your first language, why that experience is important, how well public libraries are able to support that experience, and I am gathering ideas from my participants about how their public libraries can do even better than they are now.… Continue reading “First-language reading and the role of the public library”

A recent publication in the Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association describes the findings of the first of two phases of a major research project undertaken by members of the Charles Sturt University Libraries Research Group. The project team is lead by Dr Jane Garner and Dr Simon Wakeling, with the publishing group comprising researchers from the School of Information Studies: Professor Philip Hider, Associate Professor Hamid Jamali, Dr Jessie Lymn and Dr Yazdan Mansourian, and Dr Holly Randell-Moon from the School of Indigenous Australian Studies.… Continue reading “‘Steady Ships’ in the COVID-19 Crisis: Australian Public Library Responses to the Pandemic”

Having seen news articles like this one: ‘Libraries start new chapter to support vulnerable’ , I became interested in the role that public libraries can play in working with vulnerable members of our communities. If Melbourne City Libraries had employed a social worker to help library staff with this role, I thought there must be lessons that can be learned from that experience. After arranging a meeting with Leanne Mitchell at the Melbourne City Library, I was able to talk with her about the project, where it was going and what steps they had taken to evaluate the work they were doing.… Continue reading “A Social Worker in the Library – a new article tells the Melbourne story”

Dr Jane Garner

In late 2019, I undertook a unique study of the status of libraries in Australia’s juvenile justice facilities. The goal of the study was to discover how many libraries were in our juvenile justice facilities, how they were staffed, funded, and used by the young people living in correctional detention. As each facility houses a registered secondary college that all residents must attend, there was a particular interest in how these libraries were contributing to the education of detainees.… Continue reading “Libraries in Australian Juvenile Justice Facilities”