Sharing Digital Navigators Among Public Libraries

In approximately 12 months of regional navigation, there were 1,583 hours of appointments. Navigators met with over 600 unique clients, many repeatedly, in over 1,600 appointments. As part of these appointments, navigators thoughtfully distributed 310 laptops and 147 tablets.

These results demonstrate that outreach from libraries with connections to partners that service or organize low-income will have a substantial pool of clients who need services. The actual statistics show that a significant number of residents from all walks of life need support to be able to use the internet meaningfully.  

Who Was Impacted?

The short answer is, that given the complexity of the digital world and the speed of change, clients came from every income level and every age group. The breakdowns of these demographics, however, can help you plan. 

Income: 

Of the 63% of clients who shared their income level, 38.5% had an income level below the state median and another 10.6% with income between 50% and 30% of the state median income.  An additional 7% of residents who made appointments had incomes between 50 and 80% of the state median income and another 7% had incomes over 80% of the state median. 

Age: 

Out of the 614 clients that navigators engaged, 20.6% were 35 years and under, 24.64% were 36 to 55 years of age, and 33.2% were 56 or older. 

Highest Level of Education:  

The largest group of residents who sought assistance, 36.2% of the total, indicated that their highest level of education was high school or a GED.  Those who had vocational training or an Associate's Degree made up 16.6%, and those with a Bachelor's Degree or higher combined to make up 16.9%. About one fifth of the residents served chose not to answer this question. 

Referrals: 

By far the most important source of referrals to navigators came from family or friends.  Word of mouth recommendations made up 37.7% of the total. The second largest group of referrals, 29.4% came from library staff. Community organizations accounted for 16.3% of the total.  Promotional materials, such as posters and banners, were cited as important by 8%.  A little more than 13% indicated other disparate sources of referral.  Though it was not captured in the data points, library directors surveyed at end the project indicated that their town government played a significant role.

Languages: 

The majority of clients, 74.4% conducted their appointments in English.  Spanish language navigation was prized and at least 12.3 % chose navigation support in this language. An important group of residents, 4.5%, asked for the Arabic-speaking navigator.  And navigators found tools that allowed them to provide services to 1.6% of residents who preferred Haitian or Cape Verdean Creole. In all, residents that came to the program had 36 first languages other than English and navigators used commonly available translation and interpretation tools to serve them. 

Impact on Library Relationships with the Community

More than half of the participating library directors found that their library's relationships with the community were strengthened during the project, as documented by the quotes below: 

"As the program progressed, many residents heard of the project through their neighbors and through their local church, opening things up dramatically and bringing the Latino population to our library.  Thanks to our navigator being a Spanish language speaker, he was able to reach into the English Language Learners (ELL) population of my town. I do not think this could have happened without this program and our navigator."

". . . we found that we engaged with new partners and I find that interesting. It tells me that there are needs for digital navigation that have not been filled and that we should explore ways to reach additional organizations. Sometimes the way that a community organization gets interested in such services for their clients flows from one year's agenda. So, reaching out one or another year may yield different results with the same organization." 

"This program was exemplary in its inclusion of bi-lingual navigators....  new arrivals learn firsthand not only about the digital navigator program, but about free library programs and services available to them."

"Having a navigator allowed us to reach out to several of the local assisted living facilities. We ended up forging a strong partnership with the Coachman Square. The Programming director there was enthusiastic from the start, and she worked with the navigator to establish a presence for him at the facility. He went there, usually at 5:00 pm, and his visits were always popular with the residents. The Programming Director was incredibly happy with the program, stating after its end, 'it exceeded my expectations.'"

Below find the complete excel data spreadsheet for the CT State Library Regional Navigator Sharing experience.

This excel spreadsheet is the complete data set for the IMLS Regional Navigator Sharing Plan experience.