LISNews: Librarian News

Peter Poe, staff writer for the Washington Post has written this favorable article about the addition of other language books and online catalogs into libraries collections.
\"Not long after she moved here from Taiwan, Sherry Yu found something shocking in an American library. It was a library card application form written entirely in Chinese.
\"I came here to see what an American library looks like and I\'m leaving with an American library card,\" Yu, 21, said in Chinese, smiling as she held up a key chain with a library tag on it. \"Can you believe that?\"

\"Since 1898, when Congress authorized that the District open its first library in a house on New York Avenue, public libraries across the region have strived to maintain a broad collection to serve varied interests. Now, librarians say the demand for diversity is immensely greater, and though Wheaton\'s foreign language collection is large, demand often outpaces supply.

\"They are some of the most popular materials in the library,\" said Cynthia Hicks, the Wheaton manager, a 30-year library veteran. \"We can\'t keep them on the shelves. . . . What people want in their libraries has changed, particularly the demand for Internet access and for materials in other languages.\"