Posts Tagged ‘hispanic/latino’
Neat work at Queens, NYC Library
Posted on: January 3, 2012
This article from The New York Times on the work that the public libraries in Queens, NYC do caught my eye. It is about how they cater and meet the needs of a very diverse polyglot population. I will admit that if I was single with nothing to lose, so to speak, this would definitely be the kind of librarianship I would want to practice: in a diverse multicultural setting where various languages thrive. And I’d be happy too if they sent me to the Feria de Libros in Guadalajara to buy Spanish books (haha, that’d be a bonus). In the end, much of it would be low salary in relation to cost of living issue for me; I probably could not afford to live then in relation to what they pay. Certainly not an academic setting, but maybe the community-mindedness in me, the opportunities and challenges for things like outreach, like instruction (to an extent), working with diverse people that have clear and significant needs are things that make this kind of work appealing to me.I think for a bilingual librarian like me who is comfortable working with diverse populations and is willing to keep on learning this could be a good job.
Anyhow, just some random thoughts.
The observance ends on October 15, but clearly there is still a lot of work to do in the Latino community to get ahead, if some of these stories are any indication. While I think that the observance is important, we should not just focus on all the positives. As a community, we need to also look at what more needs to be done.
- USA Today reported on Hispanic students facing barriers to get a higher education. This article is drawing on research from the Pew Hispanic Center. Here is the study "Latinos and Education: Explaining the Attainment Gap," from which the article seems to be drawing information. This other report on "The Changing Pathways of Hispanic Youths into Adulthood" may also be of interest in the context of the newspaper article. Overall the message is that more needs to be done to make college more accessible to Latinos. Then again, it needs to be more accessible overall.
- The National Council of La Raza has released an analysis of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. It "finds that while necessary, the new rules do not sufficiently improve the law to help Latino students." You can get a link to the full study at the site.
- The Census Bureau has made available national-level tabulations from the Current Population Survey on "Hispanic Population in the United States: 2007 and 2008." These are provided as Excel sheets, so keep that in mind, but you can get the data and then use it for research.
And under other links that I want to highlight. These are additional links I wanted to highlight in a post for the library blog, but sadly, I ran out of time to organize and make a post. So consider this a sort of
- The Pura Belpre Award. "The Pura Belpré Award, established in 1996, is presented to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth" (from the ALA Website).
- And here is the Americas Book Award. It is "given in recognition of U.S. works of fiction, poetry, folklore, or selected non-fiction (from picture books to works for young adults) published in the previous year in English or Spanish that authentically and engagingly portray Latin America, the Caribbean, or Latinos in the United States." The award is sponsored by the national Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs (CLASP).
- A cool resource from the Library of Congress's American Memory Project: Hispano Music and Culture of the Northern Rio Grande: The Juan B Rael Collection. It documents "religious and secular music of Spanish-speaking residents of rural Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado."
Overall, I found some very interesting things this year, and I wish I would have had a bit more time to share them with folks. Oh well, there is always next year.
I finally managed to put up our display for Hispanic Heritage Month in our library. We are fortunate because we got a nice traveling exhibit from Humanities Texas, which I put up after the crates arrived, with a little help from a most helpful colleague. Anyhow, I also created a book display, which goes along with the traveling display and also helps highlight the observance. I hope to get a post with some links and resources to post on our library blog, but I have a bunch of other things going on. Thus I am making this post with some links and notes, so I can draw from it later. If anyone finds this useful, feel free to link or make your own notes as well.
- From the Pew Hispanic Center, a report on "Hispanics, Health Insurance, and Health Care Access." This struck me as interesting and relevant. I did not want to post about it in the library blog until I had time to read it over. I do trust Pew as a source, but knowing the local politics, I better read it before I post it over there. H/T to Docuticker.
- From President Obama's White House blog, "Todos Somos Americanos," notes on the President's remarks to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. You can get a link to the actual remarks and some photos. Actually, the President's blog is a pretty good resource to see what the President is doing, and it is informative as well. One of the nicer government 2.0 initiatives. Also from the blog, the text of the Presidential Proclamation for Hispanic Heritage Month, in Spanish. Here is the English version. I used the English version on the display, but I did not find the Spanish one right away. I am going to see if I can print it, make it look nice, and add it in.
- Database and reference works provider Gale has some resources for Hispanic Heritage Month here.
- The Law Library of Congress has a guide of resources for National Hispanic Heritage Month over here.
- The Census Bureau has their fact sheet for the observance here. I used some of the facts on the sheet to go with my book display at the library.
- From NASA, the Latina Women of NASA. It does sound like some Playboy pictorial, but it is actually a nice set of links with Latina astronauts as well as other Latinas working at NASA. Good for inspirational material.
- Here is a page from the Smithsonian's Education Portal for Hispanic Heritage Month.
- If you want a reading list, the Florida Department of Education has a small list of recommended readings by grade level.
- The National Park Service has a page for the month as well here.
- PBS has a page listing programming related to the observance here. As the jingle goes, "check your local listings."
A sampling of what some universities are doing. I did a search on our own university website, and there was absolutely no reference to any event or even recognition of National Hispanic Heritage Month on the campus website. The only references are what the library is doing, and you can find it on our blog, which is linked in our website. Otherwise, it is pretty much as if the observance did not exist, which, given this is Texas, which has a pretty big Latino population, you would think someone would notice. At least here at the library, we (mostly me) did our part. But I wanted to look around and see what other universities might be doing. This is a sampling of what I found doing a quick Google search limited to .edu domains:
- List of events at University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
- Here is what Ohio University is doing. Sure, we are nowhere in the league of Ohio University, but if some college in Ohio can notice, why can't we?
- Houston Community College's highlights of activities (this is a video).
- Here is the list of events at Texas A&M, from their Department of Multicultural Services. The list of campus sponsors caught my eye. I have my work cut out for me if I want to have a campus department or two help sponsor some kind of event.
- Even in Kansas they observe the event, and at University of Kansas, they keep going until early November.
- Loyola University in Chicago has some interesting events too.
- And this is what they did at my old stomping ground, Indiana University.
If nothing else, these lists give me some ideas of things to work on for the future. I have to keep reminding myself that Rome was not built in a day.
