The Hmong Resource Center Library

The Hmong Resource Center Library was initiated in 1998 due to the fact that there was no existing centralized place in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area where the broader community including educators, service providers, and students could find an extensive collection of resources related to the Hmong. The Resource Center started as a small collection with no staff of its own. Its collection of Hmong-related theses and dissertations as well as academic articles is now likely the largest and most up-to-date body of Hmong-related academic literature in the United States and exceeds the centralized holdings of any American college or university pertaining to the Hmong diaspora. At the same time, the Resource Center also is very much a community-based institution that serves the varied needs of the Hmong and broader community with family literacy materials, multicultural education presentations, and Hmong cultural resources. The current holdings of the Hmong Resource Center currently include 238 dissertations and theses, 652 books, 820 academic journal articles as well as collections of newspaper articles, videos and a small audio collection of cassettes and CDs. The Hmong Resource Center library is a heavily utilized program that provides resources related to the Hmong people, Hmong culture and history in the Minneapolis-St. Paul community and beyond. The Hmong Resource Center library has served around 1,000 patrons a year for more than a decade. The full catalog holdings of the library may be viewed at its website: http://www.hmonglibrary.org/. The Hmong Resource Center Library has the following goals: Hmong parents have access to children’s books in Hmong and English to read to their kids; Elementary, primary and secondary level Students have access to comprehensive materials about the Hmong for projects and research; Service Professionals who work with the Hmong have access to an extensive collection of materials related to Hmong culture and customs, educational adaptation and health and medical issues; Interested groups from area schools, social service agencies, and colleges have a place where they can come to learn about the Hmong culture and available resources.