The
University of Colima Lisa Katzenstein
On Valentine's Day 1998, I arrived in Guadalajara, Mexico, for a two-week adventure in Mexican librarianship. This adventure was funded by a grant from the U.S.-Mexico Fund for Culture administered by the Texas-Mexico Relations Committee of the Texas Library Association. My mission as a librarian exchangee was to visit as many Mexican libraries as I could to learn as much as possible about Mexican librarianship during the next two weeks. I was particularly interested in picking up specialized library vocabulary in Spanish (Spanish "library lingo") since I was the designated Spanish Language Translator for Fort Worth Public Library. I also wanted to learn how Mexican libraries operated, since I was serving Mexican library patrons in Fort Worth. I thought it would be useful to know what kind of expectations a Mexican library patron in Texas would have of a library based on their experiences in Mexico. And finally, I wanted to learn more about Mexican culture, since I was the co-chair of Fort Worth Public Library's ¡Adelante! Committee, which planned and implemented programming for Hispanic Heritage Month. I was hoping to acquire ideas for programming based on my experience as a librarian exchangee in Mexico.
In two weeks, I visited a private elementary school library, three public libraries, and nine libraries (some highly specialized) either run by a university or affiliated with an institution of higher learning.
Even now, it is hard for me to place some of these libraries in a distinct category. What do you call a "public" library run by the University of Guadalajara? La Biblioteca Pública del Estado de la Universidad de Guadalajara (The Public Library of the State of the University of Guadalajara). This old and majestic library (founded in 1861) is not to be confused with La Biblioteca Central Estatal (The State Central Library), which was established after President Miguel de la Madrid started an organized public library system in Mexico in 1983.
I spent a morning with the director of the State Network of Public Libraries in Jalisco, Antonieta González Pérez-Lete, who gave me an overview of public libraries in Jalisco. I also visited three of these public libraries. From these experiences, I was able to learn the following information.
The responsibility for housing a public library in Mexico falls on each municipality that has one. The town also pays for the library's supplies. The state government pays the salaries of the personnel, and the federal government pays for the books and their processing.
Public libraries in the state of Jalisco have a general collection, a reference collection, and a juvenile collection. The only automated public library in Jalisco is the State Central Library, which uses Microbiblos, a library automation system, for their technical services. All of the public library users, however, must use the card catalog to locate materials. Most of the public libraries in Jalisco have only books and some magazines and newspapers.
There are plans to send a computer to each public library in Jalisco, with CDs containing bibliographic records for all of the books that the Federal Government has catalogued. Each library will be able to use this resource to create its own database of local holdings. Because many public library staff do not even know how to type, let alone use a computer, the director of the State Network of Public Libraries of Jalisco told me that she would prefer for these computers to arrive gradually to allow the State Library staff the time to provide training.
The
University of Colima I had the good fortune to visit the University of Colima, home of the popular automation system known as SIABUC (Sistema Integral Automatizado de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Colima). Over 480 institutions in eleven countries use SIABUC as their online catalog. It only costs $100 a year and is, of course, in Spanish. The main weakness with SIABUC is that it does not network. So if a university campus uses SIABUC for each of its libraries, users in each library can view only local holdings and even then, only record by record rather than a list of titles on the same screen. Nevertheless, SIABUC is a very popular automation system.
The University of Colima also houses CENEDIC, the Centro Nacional Editor de Discos Compactos (National Publishing Center of Compact Disks). One of my guides told me that they produce compact disks like Mexican restaurants produce tortillas, a humorous exaggeration; however, I could appreciate her comparison when I learned that they produced over 36 types of compact disks, printing a minimum of 300 copies of any final product or CD.
I also visited the Department of Educational Multimedia, composed as well of a number of departments. These multimedia compact disks are used in all levels of teaching, and their content is determined by teach-ing professionals.
I visited La Biblioteca Escolar de la Primaria Antonio Caso (the School Library of the Antonio Caso Elementary School), run by the Autonomous University of Guadalajara (La Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara). This library serves a private elementary school of 1,200 students in classes that are either all girls or mixed. The day I visited, there was a book fair and all 1,200 students were gathered in the school's very cold gym on bleachers for a parade of students, music, a recitation of the pledge to the Mexican flag, the singing of the national anthem, and a ribbon cutting by the guest of honor (me).
The elementary school library is open all year. The library had an old card catalog, but the newer titles were being entered into SIABUC, allowing computer access to these materials. Maricela Moreira, the head librarian, told me that Antonio Caso is the only elementary school in Jalisco to use SIABUC. She said that most other school libraries do not have any kind of automated catalog.
The vast majority of public libraries in Jalisco are not automated. I repeatedly heard librarians lament the lack of networking among Mexican libraries. This means that each institution must do their cataloguing in isolation and also makes interlibrary loan much more difficult. The university libraries that had their catalogs on the Internet through Aleph (an Israeli automation system) were able to share their resources with other institutions, but most librarians in Guadalajara want to be as automated as U.S. libraries.
Mexican librarians are attempting, nevertheless, to share resources. Sixteen universities in six states are working to create a common catalog, provide workshops for staff, and develop a professional profile of a librarian. This profile would give a librarian the same salary as any other academic in a Mexican university. This organization is known as El Grupo Permanente de Trabajo de Bibliotecas (Permanent Work Group of Libraries and is a subgroup of another organization, ANUIES-Asociación Nacional de Universidades e Instituciones de Enseñanza Superior (National Association of Universities and Institutions of Higher Learning).
As more Mexican libraries that have the Internet adopt Aleph as an online catalog, more possibilities for resource sharing will arise, since Aleph is accessed through the Net.
Patricia Hernández Mejía y Llera, director of the library a the Universidad del Valle de Atemajac (known as UNIVA), made some excellent observations that could be used to explain the current situation regarding technology in libraries in Mexico:
According to Maestra Pastora Rodríguez Aviñoá, the head of the coordination of the libraries of the University of Guadalajara, libraries are not viewed as valuable in Mexico. She attributed this to the poor pay and status of the librarian in Mexico. Other librarians told me that many teachers and professors were not trained to use the library as a resource when they were in school. This means that students are not encouraged to use the library as often as they should by their instructors. Although one can acquire a "diplomado" in Library Science in Guadalajara through 196 hours of continuing education, Maestra Rodríguez Aviñoá says that this is simply not enough training even to learn how to conduct an effective reference interview. However, this diplomado is helping library staff to specialize in various areas of library operations, an opportunity that they might not have ever had otherwise. Nevertheless, Maestra Rodríguez Aviñoá felt very strongly that librarians needed a professional profile in Mexico.
In my current position at Dallas Public Library, I work every day with Mexican library patrons. Many do not speak any English. Some may have only used Mexican public libraries or have never used a library before. Based on my experience visiting public libraries in Jalisco, I have the following recommendations for welcoming and serving Mexican immigrants in our public libraries:
Not all Mexican immigrants are literate in Spanish, so it is very important that our bilingual staff be able to explain in Spanish all the policies of library.
So how do we bring Mexican immigrants into our libraries? In my personal experience, the service that consistently attracts Mexican immigrants to the library is the teaching of English as a Second Language (ESL) classes. Of course, many come to use our materials, so a good Spanish collection is a must. The location of the library is important. I work at the Walnut Hill Branch Library, located across the parking lot from an office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. We need to thank the INS for being our neighbor, since most immigrants could not miss seeing our library while en route to the INS! They often come in to ask where the INS is located, another plus! (Our library is a much larger building than the INS office.)
Library services should be publicized in Spanish in the local Hispanic media, as well as at places where Mexican immigrants can be found, such as churches and community centers. Hispanic organizations should also be contacted and asked to distribute or display library information in Spanish.
Some Mexican immigrants come into our public libraries expecting to buy books. This is most likely due to the fact that the word "library" resembles the word "librería" in Spanish, which means "bookstore." Prominent signs in Spanish beneath our English signs outside our library buildings would let Mexican immigrants know that our libraries are "bibliotecas" and not "librerías."
My last night, I was the guest speaker at the monthly meeting of the Asociación Jalisciense de Bibliotecarios (The Association of Librarians of Jalisco). I gave my fourth and final presentation on Fort Worth Public Library. I was warmly received, and was pleased to see eight librarians whom I had met during my visits to different libraries. After my talk, I was given a certificate from the Association of Librarians of Jalisco, as well as some gifts. I was even invited to a cafe after the meeting by the Association's officers. There, they spoke of their love of libraries, and their hopes that one day librarians in Mexico would be recognized for their worth by receiving better pay. I was impressed by the enthusiasm and dedication of these librarians and their colleagues for librarianship. At each library that I had visited, I saw library staff doing the best that they could with the resources that were at their disposal, and they were constantly working to improve library operations.
I joined the association, and received a membership pin. I treasure this pin: it reminds me of those very special two weeks that I spent visiting libraries in Guadalajara and learning about library science in Mexico, improving my "library lingo" in Spanish, and absorbing all that I could of Mexican culture. I strongly recommend that other librarians in Texas apply for this scholarship, because I have benefited from it immensely, as have the Mexican library patrons that I have served at Fort Worth Public Library and now at Dallas Public Library.
Thanks to María Elena Saucedo, Cultural Affairs Specialist, U.S. Information Service, at the United States Consulate in Guadalajara, who answered all of my questions and arranged for my visits to the libraries listed below:
Lisa Katzenstein is assistant branch manager at the Walnut Hill Branch of the Dallas Public Library.
