Wednesday and Thursday

These two days are a blur in my notes and mixed all together, so I decided to create a single post about some of the events that stood out for me.

First, the we solved the internet access and were finally able to work. I love cataloging!! It is very detailed and there are a clear set of rules to follow. When I get to the bibles it's a little more challenging. It was felt like solving a giant puzzle and there was such a sense of accomplishment when you finished each record. Everyone seemed to work well together, answering each other's questions and making recommendations when needed. Cataloging the German books was a unique challenge since most of them were not in OCLC, but it was a good opportunity to learn something besides copy cataloging.

On one of the days Sarah, Emme, and I went for a walk to find the "supermarket." After giving up we ended up in this little restaurant for lunch. Since it was a little more off the tourist path we had no idea what were ordering, and it somehow felt much more authentic than any other other restaurants. We laughed at their version of ketchup and had a wonderful time.

Wednesday night, most of us went to watch the presidential debate at a local restaurant. I did a similar thing in Thailand years ago. For some reason, watching debates in another country with a group of Americans that travel and have international experiences is always rewarding and feels very patriotic! It, of course, helped that I agreed with most of the people in the room.

Thursday, Julie and I took a taxi to the supermarket. It was very big and felt very American. In many ways it was sad to walk the aisles since you could see how much of our culture has infiltrated theirs. After buying pizza and drinks we headed back to the house. It was wonderful to have the entire group over, including some of the library employees.

Unfortunately, I had homework for another class. In retrospect it would have been better to finish everything for the other classes. When we had down time I wanted to be out exploring or talking to classmates, not reading or doing homework.

Finishing up "Serving Latino Communities" by Alire and Ayala

I just finished reading Serving Latino Communities: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians. I was very impressed with this book. It was straight forward and easy to read. The specific suggestions, such as which distributors to contact would be simple for any library to implement. They covered options from a low budget beginning to a comprehensive service to Latinos program.

Although much of the book seemed to consist of pretty common sense suggestions there were some ideas that stood out to me as being very important. Many of these were covered in my earlier posts. In addition, on page 154 they strongly encourage libraries to include buying for Latinos as a part of their collection development policy. This is important for two reasons. First, it guarantees that serving Latinos is a priority. Secondly, it provides documentation that can be used later when these purchases may be questioned. I also think that it is a valuable point that librarians cannot assume that Latino patrons want information in Spanish (p. 159). In many communities the Latino population is quite fluent in English and may prefer to obtain their information in English.

Most of the chapter on creating a bilingual/bicultural workplace would be relatively easy to implement. However, recruiting Latino board members is a wonderful suggestion that I had not considered.

Finally, chapter 9 on "Obtaining Funding" is a critical component of any library service. Their suggestions for grant writing are particularly appropriate and helpful since these can be an excellent funding source when providing service to an underserved population.

I found this book to be incredibly insightful. It is interesting (and discouraging) that when I went to look for it at my local library I had to have it interlibrary loaned. It came in from the University of Wyoming. Hopefully that does not indicate that Oregon libraries have opted not to purchase it. Maybe it is so popular that it was checked out everywhere. I believe that this is a book that all libraries should have as their own reference tool.

Going to Mexico

As a graduate student in the School of Library and Information Science at Emporia State University I have the great opportunity to do a service learning project. I am one of eight students going to work in the Biblioteca Publica in San Miguel De Allende, Mexico. Although we don't know the specifics yet; we will be working with the library helping with (and learning about!) their collection development, cataloging and database maintenance.

The week before we leave I'm attending a conference, Connecting Communities: Reaching out to Latino Youth and Families, in Corvallis, OR. The timing seems ideal and the conference should be a valuable compliment to the class.

This course was particularly appealing to me since my children attend a Spanish dual-language immersion school. Many of their classmates are Latino and I have watched their struggle for services and community support. My hope is that this class and the conference will help teach me how the library profession can improve services to this unique community.

This blog will provide me the chance to reflect about the course readings, course activities, the trip to Mexico, and the role of librarians in providing services to Latino patrons.