Grisham en Espanol? Suburban Atlanta library: No!

Anonymous Patron writes “AccessNorthGa.com: In a suburban county where one out of six residents is Hispanic, the library board has axed money budgeted to buy more “adult Spanish fiction” _ books like the latest John Grisham thriller in Spanish or Marcela Serrano novel in its original language.”

June 21, 2006 by Blake Uncategorized 5

Chuck says:

June 21, 2006 at 7:57 pm

What a bunch of crap.
I wonder if anyone actually believes the reason they aren’t buying books in Spanish is so they don’t set a precedent for buying books in a multiplicity of languages?

I don’t.

If you have a population that your library serves you have a professional obligation to buy materials they want to read (within reason) as your budget allows.

They are bending to race-baiting pressure and the incorrect assumption that anyone who reads books in Spanish is an illegal immigrant.

Everyone involved seems to have abdicated their professional and human responsibilities.

Vomit-inducing. Truly.

Reply
Anonymous Patron says:

June 21, 2006 at 10:11 pm

Traditional Funding of Foreign Language Books
Throughout the 20th century ethnic cultural groups wishing to preserve their culture would donate books or book funding to their local public libraries. It is not clear if this continues to be the case in this century. In any case public libraries must be held accountable to their funders, most probably, predominantly the taxpapsers of their community.

Reply
gypsy librarian says:

June 21, 2006 at 10:52 pm

It is sad indeed
And are we saying that the Spanish language readers of the community do not pay their taxes for that library as well as everyone else? Because as the commenter above points out, it seems very often the race baiting assumption is that such readers are illegal immigrants. If anything else, someone should be checking what the demographics are and who is supporting what. I am willing to guess there is more than a fair number of taxpayers who want and desire those Spanish language items.

Reply
sarahmae says:

June 22, 2006 at 2:30 am

We all know…
that you don’t want to start down that slippery slope of actually serving your community’s needs.

Note that this was passed immediately after the firing of the Library Director, so many people had just left the room. Therefore, how many members of the public were available to debate and give comment on this issue?

Reply
mdoneil says:

June 22, 2006 at 7:01 am

So stupid so many ways
This is so stupid in so many ways. They don’t want to get stuff in a multitude of languages- BS. They just don’t want to buy stuff in Spanish.

Simple solution, introduce the Spanish readers to ILL. Since they don’t charge for ILL if the library has to request hundreds and hundreds of books through ILL you can bet they will soon buy them to save on postage.

If they say they don’t ILL books in other languages I will move there and request heavy books in languages I don’t read. What is that big stone thing in Korea?

Spend the 3 grand you ignorant bigots or I’ll print 1000 of the flyers about ILL in Spanish and mail them to all of the Mexican stores in Gwinett county.

Don’t screw with me I am a librarian.

Reply