A recurring topic of discussion during the symposium was that multicultural training workshops should focus on developing skills among trainees to recognize and overcome intercultural boundaries and hurdles. Two types of boundaries were defined by symposium participants:

1. Intercultural, or within a culture: The emphasis here is that people should recognize the differences that exist within a culture, such as gender, political, class, disability, education, and religious affiliation.
2. Intracultural, or within two or more cultures: These dissimilarities are generally more visible and exist because of differences such as skin color, language, or religious and social values.

Two solutions emerged from the symposium's proceedings that training workshops can use to help the trainees cross cultural boundaries:

1. Identify broader subjects and emphasize lifelong learning so that IPs become aware of new knowledge being generated in the world. Such awareness will broaden thinking and enhance receptivity to change.
2. Focus on good work ethics that IPs should develop and practice in multicultural settings. That way, libraries can demonstrate the underlying strengths and values of their culture to their clients, and librarians can interact as effective leaders with colleagues, clients, and management.

A comfort zone was defined by symposium participants as the sphere of life within which an individual acts during work, leisure, and social interactions. The rationale is that most people routinely function within a circle of friends and colleagues from within their own culture. Symposium participants commented that some people manage to extend comfort zones easily while, for most, an intervention has to occur to change this routine. A couple of intervention techniques are thus derived from the symposium proceedings to extend this comfort zone:

1. Creating extended comfort zones on campus and at work: Trainees in multicultural workshops should be encouraged to pair with a colleague from a different cultural background. This technique is similar to what Brown recommends when he suggests that a librarian should gain awareness of an unfamiliar culture by befriending an international.¹⁰ For example, one of the participants suggested that casual lunch and coffee meetings by workshop trainees should be encouraged, or that trainees might participate together in a sporting activity or leisure activity like movie watching. The trainees should be asked to bring back to the classroom their experiences from the activity. The ensuing classroom discussions could then focus on individual cases to understand the cultural commonalities and disparities, the ideas of reconciliation, or learning to disagree amicably if another person's expressed viewpoint does not fit one's own view of things or events.
2. Creating extended comfort zones off campus or in a community: The trainees should be encouraged to reach out and interact with a neighbor from another culture within their community. After each encounter, the trainee should report his or her experience to the class so that others can benefit from the episode. The rules of engagement during this reaching-out initiative should be that the majority culture will interact with a minority, while the members of the minority community will interact with a person belonging to the majority, or another minority culture.

An interesting concept that developed from the symposium proceedings was that of an intercultural champion. This theme was defined in more practical terms by the symposium participants than the notion of a “diversity champion” put forth by Somerville and Yusko.¹¹ Intercultural champions are defined as people who act as a role model and are willing to take the initiative and reach out and communicate freely with people from other cultures. Many symposium participants were of the opinion that staff members are usually able to identify such a person in their organization. Thus three training recommendations developed from symposium discussions:

1. Intercultural training workshops should demonstrate to the trainees the need to identify an intercultural champion in their classroom, community, or workplace.
2. The trainees should be asked to spot potential intercultural champions from among their colleagues and possibly develop an association with them. The trainees also should be encouraged to nominate a champion in their library for a special task or position on a relevant multicultural committee or council. Potential champions also may be nominated to act as mentors and assist in the adoption of the intercultural program tenets by new staff members and to become leaders in implementing ongoing intercultural immersion programs for their colleagues or clients in everyday work settings.
3. Workshop training also can focus on creating new intercultural champions. A suggested technique was to ask trainees to mimic an intercultural champion in their life (present or past) by recalling and documenting the actions of that mentor or champion. Problem-based learning (described below) could then be used to study the habits and manners of intercultural champions and assess why it is easier for some people to cross intercultural boundaries than others.

The emerging theme under this topic was the use of problem-based learning (PBL) technique.¹² PBL is recommended in training workshops to analyze contrasting cultural viewpoints and cases and thus develop a culturally aware individual. Symposium participants cited the use of PBL in studying the effects of life-altering events like wars, famines, natural calamities, or political disturbances that increase immigration pressures. This included looking at immigration happening because of wars (e.g., World War II, Middle Eastern conflict), or because of third-world poverty and by discussing the extreme conditions and circumstances that forced immigrants to flee their habitats, leaving loved ones and material possessions.

Symposium participants identified the use of PBL techniques in other situations also. For example, PBL can be used in amicable discussions, allowing trainees to learn how to reconcile with people from other cultures, how to disagree without animosity, and how to learn the viewpoints and behaviors of others and develop the skills needed to avoid stereotyping or make assumptions about other cultures.

As a final phase of developing culturally aware individuals, some visible minority participants suggested that workshop trainees should be educated about the potential impact of information available via the Internet. This part of training should focus on the nature of information currently available online and its role.

Symposium participants emphasized the importance of visits to the international house on an academic campus, or to nearby ethnic center(s). These visits can provide a rich intercultural immersion experience, and trainees may even take part in social events there. Over a longer term, management should ensure that ongoing collaboration continues to happen between the organization and ethnic centers in the area to exchange lectures and visits. While visiting ethnically diverse neighborhoods during an exchange and outreach program, trainees also should explore areas in the vicinity to increase their cultural awareness and become knowledgeable about the diversity, the cultural practices, and the local demographic trends in the areas that their library or workplace serves.

Consensus emerged during discussions that good communication between patrons and coworkers is essential to establishing strong intercultural ties and an increased understanding of other cultures. Several recommendations were derived from the symposium about how future multicultural workshops can implement this in practice:

1. Teaching a “reach out first” approach. By taking an initiative in reaching out to people from other cultural groups, attendees can better communicate and understand the attitudes, concerns, and problems faced by minorities.
2. Teaching trainees to focus on the gist and content of the conversation rather than pronunciation, accent, tone or grammar as has been suggested in a previous study.¹³ Some cultural practices may be demonstrated in this respect, for example, high-context cultures sometimes indicate agreement simply out of politeness rather than by way of actually understanding.¹⁴ Similarly, a basic understanding of the nonverbal cues to recognize facial expressions, gestures, eye-contact habits, and other expressive signs needs to be achieved. Readers are referred to a checklist of communication techniques for librarians developed by Osa, Nyana, and Ogbaa.¹⁵
3. Training IPs to interact effectively with people from other cultures by understanding and acknowledging the other person's strengths and interests rather than their visible appearances and language. The workshops need to ensure that trainees understand and react to the workings, skills, and abilities of fellow workers or patrons.

Some practicing professionals in the symposium suggested that training workshops should encourage the identification of culturally diverse material and resources in libraries for collection development and promotional purposes. Promotion of these items could possibly coincide with local cultural festivals to enhance “intercultural understanding.”¹⁶ Thus the symposium participants recommended that future IPs should be prepared and willing to do the following:

1. Conduct poster sessions (focused on a specific culture or group) and community discussion forums to educate patrons and staff members. Such sessions will create low-intensive arenas, described by Audunson as places where one is exposed to the values and interests of others.¹⁷ According to Audunson, people are usually exposed to high-intensive arenas, such as their workplaces, sporting venues, family reunions, and places of worship, where they may not get the opportunity to interact with people from other cultures. The library as a place should always encourage multiculturalism by providing a low-intensive meeting place where community issues are discussed, opposing viewpoints are welcomed, and tolerance is promoted.
2. Conduct multicultural readings and “show and tell” programs. Zhang additionally recommends that translations of appropriate material, such as glossaries of common terminology and library maps and information, may also be provided during these sessions.¹⁸ The emphasis should be on providing written material as international students generally have a better comprehension of the English language in a written format rather than through spoken dialogue.

One final observation under this theme is that intercultural workshops participants need to spend some time deliberating the issues of availability and cost-effective access to the Internet, the digital divide existing even within the most advanced societies, and the availability of other modern wireless communication tools. Minorities living in many areas may have limited financial means, and therefore all aspects of anticipated interactions need to be taken into account before designing a library activity.

The reality is that we live in culturally diverse societies. Based on this premise, this article focused on one segment of society and explored the intercultural challenges facing information professionals. The objective was to design procedures that will help improve work efficiency through successful cultural interaction. The objective was achieved by analyzing data from the proceedings of a symposium held to explore multicultural challenges facing practicing and aspiring IPs. The outcome is a suggested set of techniques and procedures that organizational management can use to design multicultural training programs. These recommendations also may be modified to fit LIS program requirements and added to study units, or they may be adapted for training people in non-information-processing work environments, where intercultural interaction is anticipated.