Walter Minkel finds that not many libraries are publishing their web sites in Spanish - yet.
By Walter Minkel April 15, 2001By 2050 almost a quarter of the people living in the United States will be Hispanic. Minorities of all kinds are increasing as a proportion of the U.S. population as well. This will have huge implications for library services over the next half-century. Right now the vast majority of library professionals (and library techies) are white, and despite the outreach efforts of the past 30 years, the American public library system retains its basic white, European, English-speaking heritage. All of us in libraries who like to think about the services and materials we'll be offering in the future should be thinking about a future America that is more multiethnic and multicultural--and that includes multilingual.
| Link List
Austin PL's Resources Hall County Library LIBROS's Ayuda Los Angeles Public Library LAPL's Links Multnomah County Library's PLCMC's StoryPlace San Antonio PL's U.S. Department of |
By the numbers
You can see the projections for yourself by downloading a report from the Department of Commerce's (DOC) Minority Business Development Agency called 'Minority Population Growth: 1995 to 2050.' While the Asian population will actually grow the most proportionally (267 percent) over that period, the Asian population of the United States is currently fairly small. It will grow, according to the DOC, from 11.2 million in 2000 to 22 million in 2025 to 34.4 million in 2050. The African American and Native American populations will grow, too, but not as spectacularly. The white population, which right now includes the vast majority of library professionals, will grow by only seven percent, from 193.6 million in 2000 to 209.1 million in 2025 and then begin to decrease to 207.9 million by 2050. The DOC report says that 'Minority children (aged five and under) will exceed nonminority children by 2030.'
But the most spectacular growth will be that of Hispanics, whose numbers will increase from 31.4 million in 2000 to 58.9 million in 2025 to 96.5 million in 2050. Because of birth rate patterns, a far higher proportion of this Hispanic population will be children and teenagers. Librarians should be anticipating now a tremendous growth in the number of Hispanic children and families they serve.
Serving Spanish speakers
Serving Hispanic families, particularly lower-income families or recent arrivals from Latin America, is often different from serving non-Hispanic families. I have spoken to a lot of librarians and library outreach workers over the years, and they tell the same story--serving Spanish-speakers is a matter of human contact. Elva Garza, manager of the Terrazas Branch of Austin PL, TX, says that to have the library adopted into a lower- and middle-income Hispanic community requires plenty of time and lots of face-to-face at local events outside the library. (Librarians interested in learning more about how best to serve Spanish-speaking populations on- or offline should read 'The Best Little Library in Texas,' SLJ 1/01, about the Terrazas Branch.)
Does it follow that online resources have a tougher row to hoe before being accepted into Spanish-speaking communities? Most of the library web sites I've visited seem to answer this question affirmatively; if you go to Austin PL's web site, you will see little evidence of services to Spanish speakers. When I visited the site on March 5, the library's homepage was entirely in English. The only Spanish on the 'Resources for Youth' page was an announcement for an upcoming library/reading festival called 'DÃa de los Niños/DÃa de los Libros,' now celebrated in a number of communities nationwide with sizable Hispanic populations. There were no other pages in Spanish, nor any listings of links to web sites in Spanish.
San Antonio PL has a decent collection of sites in Spanish; it is far from comprehensive but better than most. Hall County Library, based in Gainesville, GA, has a nicely realized Spanish web page--and there's a link front and center to reach it from the library's homepage. The link reads, 'Para seguir leyendo en español, haga 'clik' aquÃ.' The Spanish page itself, titled 'Recursos en español/bilingües y de interés para la comunidad hispana,' contains links to several Spanish-language free e-mail services, such as LatinoLinkMail and 'Correo Yahoo.' The Hall County Library Youth Resources site also includes a link to 'Spanish Resources for Educators.' But the site does not link to many sites in Spanish for children.
Los Angeles PL has made a major effort to make everything on its site in English also available in Spanish. But its major failing is creating an equivalent for the 12 pages of links for young people in English--there's only one page of Spanish links. There simply aren't anywhere near as many kid-appropriate sites in Spanish.
LIBROS
Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR, has a growing web presence in Spanish as part of its LIBROS (Library Outreach in Spanish) program. Here visitors will find a good basic collection of online materials in Spanish for students, parents, and teachers. But Marcela Villagran, who coordinates the LIBROS program, sees the program's web site as a low priority compared with services such as story times in Spanish and literacy education for parents.
Villagran says that about one fourth of the people with whom she works, many of whom are migrant laborers passing through the Portland area to get agricultural, construction, or other jobs, have used a computer at least once, but that thus far the Internet does not hold much interest for them. Technology, she says, 'is not a major way to reach the Spanish-speaking community. Teens in schools are very much interested and know a lot about them.... But for parents, getting food and a roof for their often very large families is more important.... I think once they've solved and satisfied their main basic needs, they begin to reach out and ask for help.'
Villagran believes Spanish-speaking K-12 students are far more important targets for the LIBROS site. 'Most of them, even though they speak Spanish fluently, do not necessarily read in Spanish or at their grade level,' says Villagran. 'So I've been open to adding sites of various reading levels...separated by interests. That's why I decided to create the 'Ayuda con las Tareas' page, which has 'school-related sites' of different reading and grade level that can be used by the students depending on their reading skills.'
StoryPlace
'Members of Spanish-speaking Hispanic families will not fill out a library card application on the spot; they'll take it home to the family to talk about it first,' says Helene Blowers, web site manager for the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County (PLCMC), NC. She learned to her initial surprise how 'the family in Hispanic culture is many times more important than the individual.' Blowers, who has been working with Irania Patterson, who heads PLCMC's outreach program to Spanish-speaking families, feels that library staff need to learn that these families approach the library, technology, and the web differently from other groups.
Blowers has involved herself in outreach to Spanish speakers for the past several years, and the finest fruit of her labor has been StoryPlace. The site has developmentally appropriate animated stories and activities for preschoolers through third graders--and they're available in both English and Spanish. PLCMC decided to make use of its active and enthusiastic Spanish outreach workers to create the stories and record the 'read along' audio tracks for the site. 'We have a large Hispanic population in our area, and we had a bilingual storyteller, an outreach worker with a background in theater and acting,' says Blowers. 'We've tried very hard, when we put the audio on the site, to record native Spanish speakers. People can tell when a storyteller is not a native speaker, even if they're fluent in Spanish.' Blowers says that she's heard many compliments from people using the StoryPlace site. ESL teachers working with Spanish-speaking primary students use it; so do many native Spanish speakers working with their own and others' children.
Blowers plans next to start work on a version of StoryPlace in Vietnamese. She made her most interesting discovery about the site as she was studying the web logs dealing with its English version: the English version of StoryPlace is linked to several popular 'Learn English' sites in Korea. Blowers has also heard that the developmental level of StoryPlace's English, accompanied by audio files of native English speakers, has made the site popular with Korean students beginning English.
Her adventures in developing and managing a site in Spanish have convinced Blowers more than ever that providing library services in Spanish, culturally targeted to Hispanics, is a key to the library of the future. 'We've translated many of the basic core services and materials into Spanish. Our forms are in Spanish. That population now knows what the library has for them. All libraries should be looking at these things.' And Blowers says that includes more web services in Spanish.
| Author Information |
| Walter Minkel (wminkel@cahners.com) is Technology Editor, School Library Journal |
