====1===
From: Abdurrazzak Demirhan <ademirha_at_ocean.otr.usm.edu>
Appropriate foreign language collection?
Dear Daniel Lee, I am a graduate student at University of Southern
Mississippi in LIS and I am taking collection development like you and
this is my last semester. Because of my immigrant experience both in
Sweden, USA, knowledge in some languages (European and Middle Eastren),
and strong educational background in international studies, I may make
some suggestions.
I don't know exactly which language groups are concerned,therefore my
suggestion will be general. Firstly, there are many free newspapers are
online, almost in every language. The same is true for many periodical.
If
your library is well connected to internet you can create a directory of
news sources for your costumer or patrons. For book collection you can
look to journals of area studies like "Journal of Scandinavian Studies,
Balkan Studies, European Studies etc. Usually in this journals they have
book review. Of course, in the online sources they have book review too
but usually in native language. Yahoo.com usually has a very good
country directory. You can make search with name of the country or
language the country. I hope this will help you.
Amed Demirhan
===2===
From: "Gloria Creed-Dikeogu" <gcdikeog_at_tscpl.lib.ks.us>
Hi Daniel,
I am at present buying the foreign language books for the Topeka Shawnee
County Public Library. About five years ago, we had quite a large
foreign language collection; but these materials were under-utilized;
and the collection was disbanded as a result.
Our director recently decided that it was important to develop a foreign
language collection and so we have begun to build our foreign collection
from scratch.
Since I was not at the library when preparations were made to begin the
buying of foreign materials... this is what I gathered from all the
information that was given to me when I took over buying for the foreign
collection: We first examined the population statistics for Shawnee
County;
and then looked at population estimates for the future; before deciding
what language groups we would be buying for. We have a large Spanish-
speaking group in the city; and have already developed a sizeable
Spanish collection. We have just started to buy books in the following
languages:German, French, Italian, Chinese, Vietnamese and Russian. In
preparation for buying foreign books, we gathered articles about foreign
book
markets and procedural information and also gathered contact information
about
foreign book vendors These vendors had to be available in the USA, where
books could be bought in $ (so that we did not have to convert to
foreign currency).
Since the librarian who would be buying did not speak all the
foreign languages she was buying, contacts were sought in the community
that could speak eg. Italian, Chinese etc and that could advise about
titles and translate titles when necessary (eg. Chinese translations
were done by a Washburn professor).
It is good to develop a classical base for each language in the
collection first...and then continue to build on to the collection
from there. Question patrons using the Spanish collection or the
Italian collection to find out what they want to see on the shelf.
Encourage them to request titles...that is the only way one can
find out what that particular community wants to
read, and what the library should be buying.
A foreign language collection development policy has been written up at
our library, as a collection development guide. Some of the problems
encountered are: books are hard to catalog when you don't speak Russian
or Chinese; you don't catalog the foreign language books adding adequate
subject headings it will be hard for your patrons to search for a
foreign book unless they know the author's name or the book's title;
foreign
books cannot be looked up in the native language if the catalog is in
English
then this is a disadvantage for the native speaker, especially if his
English is poor; trying to help someone who speaks Spanish find books
to read, if you can't understand what he wants and he can't speak
English...is a nightmare! It is difficult to read catalogs that are
in Spanish only, having no English descriptions eg. video catalogs..etc.
etc.
There are a two other libraries in the Kansas and Missouri areas that I
know of that have large foreign language collections...and they are:
Kansas City Missouri Public Library and the University of Kansas,
Lawrence.
Gloria Creed-Dikeogu, MLS
Topeka Shawnee County Public Library
Adult Services Librarian
Received on Wed Oct 04 2000 - 14:12:22 EDT