Super-Diversity and Foreign-Born Students in Academic Libraries: A Survey Study

This paper reports the results of a survey study of foreign-born students' use of academic and public libraries. The researcher administered the survey at a public liberal arts college in the fall of 2014. The analysis shows that foreign-born students use both public and academic libraries with great frequency for academic tasks. Variables such as being a first-generation foreign-born student and being a foreign-born student of color also have a statistically significant effect on how these students use academic libraries as a social and study space.

The author uses a theory from migration studies called "super-diversity" to discuss how multiple identities and categories of belonging are important variables when it comes to public services. A super-diversity approach involves a shift away from studying only one variable (such as ethnicity, language use, gender, or the like) and looks instead at the effects of multiple variables on an issue, in this case library use. In addition to incorporating super-diversity as part of the data analysis, the author also discusses how the Association of College and Research Libraries Diversity Standards provide guidelines for improving services to foreign-born students based on the insights from the survey and statistical analysis.