Sue Emson (Saskatoon Public Library) describes how the need to serve the community’s marginalized populations has become more critical. She stresses the library’s strong and long-term relationships with local literacy organizations. She describes the marginalized populations that use the library, the adult literacy materials in the library, and the challenges of getting money for library literacy outreach programs. She reports on the evolution of the library’s literacy services from passive to active. The services have moved beyond just providing spaces and literacy materials to active cooperative programming (family and adult literacy) and library orientation. To be successful in its literacy services, she sees both personalized services and flexibility as key.

The authors also describe the challenges libraries face in their literacy work. These challenges include the institutional nature of libraries and the skills needed to navigate them, their rules and a lack of comfort levels for marginalized groups. Other challenges they identify include the lack of communication, collaboration between the libraries and other literacy organizations that sometimes leads to duplication or lack of integrated service. Using technology effectively to create better access for the literacy community is also another identified challenge.

In 2005, the Feliciter^{Footnote 3} focused on libraries and the under served and socially excluded groups. The issue was about community development work in the library community. This issue focused on underserved and excluded groups including the poor, the physically and mentally ill, the under-educated, the uneducated, the addicted, the abused, and the alone. Those with literacy challenges would be included across these other socially excluded groups. Annette DeFaveri (Working together: Library – Community Connections) picks up on the challenges of connecting with marginalized groups identified by others. In her article Culture of Comfort in, she asks how libraries can identify the barriers for groups who do not use library resources but could benefit from them.

She suggests that libraries need to see the institutional barriers that they erect by continuing to promote traditional ways of interacting with users. For instance, she says it is important to understand why some people feel uncomfortable and unwelcome in the library. She notes that change is not about changing the perceptions of the socially excluded about the library. Instead, she says change is about libraries changing their perceptions of the socially excluded. This change requires that libraries go out and ask the communities what they want from libraries. She emphasizes, “When we consult people about their wants and needs, and when we respond to their requests, we build an inclusive library that listens to even the faintest voices.”