Abstract of ‘Is the public library included? An analysis of local government documentation on the integration of forced migrants in Scotland’ (Salzano, Hall, Webster & Brazier, 2022)

Is the public library included? An analysis of local government documentation on the integration of forced migrants in Scotland by Rachel Salzano, Hazel Hall, Gemma Webster, and David Brazier has been published. The paper features in the Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science as the October 2022 special issue of Information Research.The 2022 CoLIS conference was held at Oslo Metropolitan University between May 29th and June 1st 2022.

The research presented in the paper draws on one of the three empirical studies that Rachel Salzano conducted as part of her doctoral study on public library use in the UK by forced migrants, as perceived by public service providers. Rachel’s presentation took place on 31st May 2022, and can be viewed below.

The main conclusion of this element of Rachel’s doctoral work is that the integration of forced migrants is an important priority of Scottish local authorities. However, the role that public libraries play in supporting integration is not acknowledged in documentation produced by local authorities.