Dr. Anthony Chow (Library & Information Science) received new funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the project “Reading Nation Waterfall: Increasing Access to Literacy and Libraries for Native American Children and Families.”

The Reading Nation Waterfall project will have one primary goal: to increase access to literary resources and libraries for Native American children and families. The project also has five primary outputs, and six primary outcomes. The project will be organized as follows: Project Administration Team at The University of North Carolina Greensboro’s School of Education; National Advisory Committee representing a diverse group of experts; Project Steering Committee will meet quarterly and be attended by all senior personnel which include representatives from each of the five Reading Nation Chapters; the Five Reading Nation Chapters are across three states: Crow Tribe of Montana (Montana), Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (North Carolina), Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina (North Carolina), Northern Cheyenne (Montana), and Kewa Pueblo, formerly Santo Domingo Pueblo (New Mexico).

The project is a Piloting and Scaling Project. Founded and informed by a 2018-2019 IMLS Planning Grant, the Reading Nation Waterfall project is at the piloting and scaling maturity level and seeks to directly respond to existing research along with the findings of our own year-long study that identified multi-faceted barriers to access to books and libraries for Blackfoot children and youth, collectively representing a book desert. Analysis of the data suggest seven main findings: 1) The Blackfoot community in general did not value or prioritize reading or libraries; 2) school libraries were not well funded and students did not have easy access to them; 3) most did not visit the tribal/public library often; 4) participants were not read to frequently as children; 5) only 25% had more than 80 books in their home libraries; 6) libraries were not considered a popular destination on the reservation; and 7) significant disconnects existed between library services and programming and needs of the community.

The project will have national impact in seven ways: 1) It further pilots, scales, and extends activities previously funded and tested in the field through an IMLS planning grant; 2) Expands these activities to new audiences; 3) Is easily replicable and implementable across the field; 4) Addresses all three aspects of the core mission of IMLS – Promote Lifelong Learning, Build Capacity, and Increase Public Access; 5) Focuses on the Lifelong Learning project category by working with cross disciplinary partners working with children from 0-10; 6) Establishes a team with the expertise, experience, and culturally appropriate perspective to implement the project; and 7) Develops and disseminates, in partnership with local and national library associations and community organizations, a Native American literacy and library model. The researchers will also develop and disseminate a process to be shared via web-based toolkit and traditional academic presentation and publications for easy replication.