Community engagement of public libraries for ensuring tribal women’s health literacy in Bangladesh

Abstract

Public libraries can play dual roles as knowledge centres and community hubs for societies. They can provide easy ways to reach out to the community by engaging the community through a number of initiatives, including health literacy. The main aim of this study is to investigate public libraries’ responses and willingness in providing health information services to tribal communities. Data was collected from 11 library professionals using a structured interview method and 276 tribal women through a survey. The data was then analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The findings show that most of the participating libraries (72.8%) did not provide any specific service for tribal-community engagement, although all of them were very positive in initiating it. On the other hand, the majority of the tribal women were interested in getting health-related information from public libraries. ‘Community engagement for health literacy’ could be a new formula for tribal communities in this regard.