As the United States becomes ever more comfortable with recognizing the cultural diversity of the many groups that make up its population, library services must seek to meet patrons' needs as they are shaped and expressed by their cultural backgrounds. This goal is particularly important for youth library services. For young people of Hispanic heritage, library services attuned to their specific needs and interests are crucial. Many librarians struggle with how to properly create and maintain library programs and collections that are suitable to the needs of Hispanic youth. In this series of essays prepared for the Trejo Foster Foundation for Hispanic Library Education Fourth National Institute, national leaders in librarianship present their insights about how best to meet the needs of young Hispanic library patrons. The text is introduced by the editors, and the essays are arranged in parts: Programs; Collections; Planning and Evaluating; Bibliographical Resources; and For the Future. Information about the contributors and an index conclude the volume.

This anthology of 17 professional readings provides effective strategies for serving Latinos in the library. These selected case studies focus on the organization and expansion of Spanish-language collections, meeting the demands of Latino children, eliminating cultural and linguistic barriers, and developments in electronic resources and the World Wide Web, among other topics. This work will help stimulate discussion about some of the pressing professional issues of relevance to Latino librarians, such as leadership development, outreach, recruitment and mentorship.

Written by three experienced LIS professionals, Latinos in Libraries, Museums, and Archives demonstrates the meaning of cultural competence in the everyday work in libraries, archives, museums, and special collections with Latino populations. The authors focus on their areas of expertise including academic, school, public libraries, health sciences, archives, and special collections to show the importance of understanding how cultural competence effects the day-to-day communication, relationship building, and information provision with Latinos. They acknowledge the role of both tacit and explicit knowledge in their work, and discuss ways in which cultural competence is integral to successful delivery of services to, communication with, and relationship building with Latino communities.

Supplying contributions from Latino librarian practitioners across the nation, this anthology provides broad coverage of the subject of Latino/Spanish speaking library service in the United States. Emphasizing public, school, and academic libraries, Pathways to Progress: Issues and Advances in Latino Librarianship taps the leading minds of the Latino library world to provide expert discourse on a wide spectrum of library services to Latino patrons in the United States. This collection of articles provides an accurate, insightful discussion of the issues and advances in Latino library service. Coverage of library service to the Latino community includes subjects such as special collections, recruitment and mentoring, leadership, collection development, reference services to gays and lesbians, children services, and special library populations. Contributors include library practitioners who are of Mexican, Chilean, Peruvian, Nicaraguan, Puerto Rican, and Cuban descent. Best practices are presented and explained in-depth with practical examples and documented citations.

Besides the cultural and language barriers library personnel encounter when interacting with the Latino community, libraries generally lack the funding to engage in multicultural advertising as well as the time and specialized personnel to do it. Provides a practical, easy-to-follow guide to creating a bilingual-friendly facility that will attracts Latino users. Offers a systematic, orderly plan that directs outreach activity with worksheets, discussion reports, and easy-to-follow schedules, and more than 100 marketing ideas, tips, and examples from libraries around the country that can easily be incorporated into day-to-day activities. Many of the strategies can be applied to outreach of other minorities as well.

Presents practical information for librarians serving Spanish-speaking people, providing historical background on various Spanish-speaking cultures and their library trends, and covering adult services, preschool to elementary children, middle grade students, teenagers, communication with patrons, and Internet resources.

Increasingly, libraries are struggling to deal with a growing diversity in the cultural background of their patrons. Problems arising from this cultural diversity afflict all library types--school, public and academic. Library Services for Multicultural Patrons is by and for all libraries that are striving to provide multicultural services to match the growing diversity in the cultural background of patrons. The book is designed to offer helpful tips and practical advice to academic, public, and school librarians who want to better serve the multicultural groups in their communities. The contributors to the book are themselves practicing librarians and they share creative ideas for welcoming multicultural patrons into libraries and strategies for serving them more effectively. Librarians will find in these chapters tried and true tips and techniques for marketing and promotion, improving reference services for speakers of English as a second language, and enhancing programming that they can easily implement in their own libraries and communities. The chapters are divided into the following categories for ease of access: 1) Getting Organized and Finding Partners, 2) Reaching Students, 3) Community Connections, 4) Applying Technology, 6) Outreach Initiatives, 6) Programming and Events, and 7) Reference Services. Librarians of all types will be pleased to discover easy-to-implement suggestions for collaborative efforts, many rich and diverse programming ideas, strategies for improving reference services and library instruction to speakers of English as a second language, marketing and promotional tips designed to welcome multicultural patrons into the library, and much more.