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.
Spending the $3,000 that had been earmarked for those Spanish reading materials next year would have only led to readers of other foreign languages to request the same treatment, the board's chairman argued. However, one board member says the move came after some residents objected to using taxpayers' dollars for patrons who might be illegal immigrants.
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The library board in the metro Atlanta county is also considering making English the default language in the self check-out screens, eliminating a prompt that now asks to choose between English and Spanish. Like the budget cut, the initiative for such a move seems to have come from some patrons.
Earlier this year, a couple of months after the library started buying novels in Spanish, the board received an e-mail from a woman identifying herself as a Gwinnett County resident who said she didn't want any more purchases "of pleasure reading materials in any language other than English."
The local Mercer County Library branch not only has a large Spanish section for fiction and non-fiction, youth and adult, it has an English as a Second Language and a Spanish language class. The county library system has a large international language collection, including Chinese and Indian periodicals. Not only is this wonderful for persons who come here speaking another lauguage, it's great for those trying to learn a foreign language! There are a bundle of DVDs in other languages, too, and I've seen a large quantity of materials to check out for persons who want to learn English.
If a few folks complained about there being monies spent on foreign-language materials, I haven't heard of it. I sure doubt the County would let it happen.
We embrace our diversity here in the Center of NJ. I love where I live.
4 comments:
Middle class Hispanics rescued Elizabeth & now are about 50% of the population by census estimates (It's probably larger). The next mayor will almost certainly be Hispanic. If anything, the library system is a bit behind the curve, but there's no question that it must & does serve the Spanish speaking community. I have no problem with that.
Me too, Sharon. I like it here. I love the thick, rich, texture of this beautiful tapestry.
It's great, if you speak Spanish. I tried to donate all of my Swedish fiction books to the local library in Hawthorne and they had no idea what to do with them. :)
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