Building culturally diverse communities through innovative public library services: a case study of Rivers State Public Library

Abstract

The study investigated building culturally diverse communities through innovative public library services: A case of Rivers State Public Library. The study was conducted in River State Public Library Board. The study employed a descriptive research design. Population of the study comprised 100 users of the Rivers State Library Board and Jubilee Library Port Harcourt. The researcher adopted the census sampling technique to select 100 users of the public libraries mentioned above which stood as the sample size. The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire. Mean and standard deviation was used to answer the research questions while the hypothesis was tested with the z-test statistics at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed among others that there are current library services meeting the needs of culturally diverse populations in Rivers State Public Library. The study concluded and recommended among others that the library should increase the number and variety of books, magazines, and online materials available in the community's spoken languages, the library should create and support inclusive programming that actively includes people from a variety of cultural backgrounds.