Spanish-services Assessment at Madison Public Library's Goodman Branch

As I have mentioned before, I am doing my practicum at the Goodman Branch of the Madison Public Library, which has one of the most diverse user-bases in the MPL system.  The Burr Oaks neighborhood, which surrounds the library, is around 34% Latino, and the library has a decent Spanish-language collection, and multiple staff people speak Spanish.  I had the opportunity to do a mini-review of the Spanish-language services offered by the Branch, which was a great way to apply what I have been learning through the course of this independent study project to a real library-world situation.  I produced three documents associated with the project: a resource guide of Spanish-language services offered in the greater South Madison area, a “mini-analysis” of the circulation statistics for the Adult World Language collection, and a list of service recommendations for the library itself.

Thinking of the advice about community assessment from Library Services for Multicultural Patrons: Strategies to Encourage Library Use, I started off by mapping out all the existing community assets, looking to community centers and other organizations that share values and goals with the library.  There are actually a large number of community resources in the South Madison area, particularly in the direct vicinity of the library itself; the Goodman branch is located in the Villager Shopping Center, along with Urban League, MATC-South, Dane County Public Health, Access Community Health Center, Madison WIC Program, Neighborhood Law Center, and Planned Parenthood (to name a few). The area is almost like a strip mall of non-profits and government resource centers. The most effective community engagement happens when a library is able to partner with other organizations already active in the area, strengthening the work each partner is doing, rather than overlapping and repeating services. One important thing I quickly realized as I complied my list of services, was that my list could function as a reference document, as I had witnessed staff members trying to remember exactly what services were offered by what organizations in the area on more than one occasion. So at that point, I changed directions a bit and formatted my list differently, adding contact information along with a brief summary of the offerings of each group. I also added a section for Spanish-language church services and media outlets, as I have learned the importance of both traditional and non-traditional "information grounds" where information passes through the Latino community.

In my analysis of the usage trends of the World Language Collection, I was particularly interested to see how well the data matched up with the Spanish-language collection development tips I had come across. For example, Paolo Coelho and Corín Tellado, two authors who were specifically mentioned in the Fiction recommendation section of an essay I had read on Spanish-language collection development (Martínez, S. [2012]. Collection Development for the Spanish Speaking. In Ayala, J. & Güereña S. [Eds.], Pathways to Progress: Issues and Advances in Latino Librarianship [pp. 7-17]. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC), both topped the list of most circulated items in the Goodman collection. On the non-fiction side of things, many of the most popular topics (health, spirituality, family/pregnancy) also matched the DDC list the same article. And just like René had mentioned in our conversation yesterday, most translations of popular English-language best-sellers like Water for Elephants or The Help were among the least circulated items.

When making my overall recommendations for action, I was guided by what I now consider to be the essential Spanish-language outreach resource: Susannah Mississippi Byrd’s ¡Bienvenidos! ¡Welcome!: A Handy Resource Guide for Marketing Your Library to Latinos.  I took multiple hints from Byrd's book, from big-idea programming suggestions like organizing a Día de los Niños/Día de los Libros children’s book celebration to little details like adding “gratis/free” to promotional material. As previously mentioned, I felt that the collection was fairly well developed, but I did make one recommendation: that the library adds fotonovelas to their collection, which was only reinforced by talking to René about her collection at Hedburg!

As this will be my last post, I want to close with an anecdote. During my time at the branch I was able to see the value of actively promoting Spanish-services first hand. I had the opportunity to assist with a four-week bilingual early literacy storytime program series called Contando Cuentos, and it was impressive to watch the attendance numbers grow as word passed through the Latino community and more families came each week. One mother approached us after class to show her appreciation. She hadn’t seen the series advertised, but was drawn over after hearing Spanish being spoken from across the library. She had been bringing her children to the library for their whole lives, but she was always disappointed that there was no children’s programming in Spanish, as her youngest boy had not learned English yet. She even volunteered to do whatever she could to help out with the program. That first week we were sad to tell her that Contando Cuentos was only a four-week series, but on the last day, we were pleased to be able to tell all the families that the library would be continuing the series with an eight-week session in the fall. Our attendance numbers finally convinced library management: there was a definite need for Spanish-language children’s programming at the Goodman Branch! The library has now taken another step towards active community engagement, helping to promote linguistic diversity and “library faith” in another generation of library users.

I look forward to taking everything I have learned through this independent study forward with me in my future professional career, always acting as an advocate for the Spanish-speaking community's information needs!