Library Services to Youth of Hispanic Heritage

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2001), "Library Services to Youth of Hispanic Heritage", Library Review, Vol. 50 No. 4, pp. 201-202. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2001.50.4.201.2

Library services for Hispanic or Latino young people is part of a much wider scenario of cultural and political inclusiveness affecting the provision of all kinds of information and education. This collection of research papers, practitioner experience and case study, summaries of issues from current publications in the field, and some informal reminiscence, derives from the fourth conference (called “Institute” here, all on Hispanic issues and libraries, held and published between 1993 and 1999) held at and by the Trejo Foster Foundation, a think‐tank for Hispanic issues with a special interest in library education, linked with Hispanic Books Distributors Inc. The variety of tone, formality, and approach typify such a conference, but overall this is an impressive and well‐informed study likely to find its way into the hands of anyone (not just in the USA) interested in knowing more about Hispanic programs, collection building, and planning and evaluation.

Under these broad sections, contributors (policy makers, academics and library administrators, all with extensive experience) identify the immediate challenges of designing and implementing effective programmes (for all ages of young people, in particular places like Miami, incorporating heritage and language, including families). Collection building draws both on general principles and on specific Hispanic developments – a good survey from Eliza Dresang, whose own Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age (H.W. Wilson, New York, NY, 1999) is worth reading, guidance from Isabel Schon whose The Best of the Latino Heritage (The Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland, 1997) is a well‐recognised source, and a practical hands‐on practitioner piece from Tim Wadham (author of Programming with Latino Children’s Materials, Neal‐Schuman, New York, NY, 1999) provides a wider viewpoint. Planning and evaluation are more predictable but nevertheless useful, examining usage and demographics, evaluation procedures, and case studies in Florida and Puerto Rico.

For anyone wanting to catch up with what is going on in the USA in this field, this work will quickly provide the signposts. Useful Internet sites are noted, too, like the REFORMA site at http://clnet.ucr.edu/ library/bplg/index.html (in Spanish and English), Isabel Schon’s Center for the Study of Books in Spanish for Children and Adolescents site at http://www/csusm.edu/cwis/ campus_centers/csb/english/center.htm, and of course Kay Vandergrift’s Special Interest Page at Rutgers University (at http://www.scils.rutgers. edu/special/kay/kayhp2.htm). There is also a useful analysis of award winners and how awards exclusively for Hispanic books have grown up. Immroth is a professor at the University of Texas Graduate School of Library and Information Science, and McCook a professor at its counterpart in South Florida and author of Women of Color in Librarianship (American Library Association, 1998). Wider issues of culture and heritage hover around the edges, and are implicit in what is said about programmes and resources, though that dimension comes across as impressionistic in a work clearly targeted on libraries.