Spanish-Language Project

Daily Hours: 3+2.5

Total Hours: 109

Both yesterday afternoon and this afternoon I worked on my analysis of the branch's Spanish-language services and collection.  I spent my "shift" yesterday compiling all the services offered by other organizations in the area, to see if there were any gaps the library could be working to meet.  Going off of some of the environmental scanning tips that I've been picking up from my Independent Study readings, I compiled a list of key stakeholders in the Latino community: not just organizations offering services, but also churches offering Spanish-language masses and Spanish-language media outlets.  After going to the NRT meeting today and thinking about the library as a "community informational hub" I realized that I could format my environmental scan into an information resource for the library staff to have on hand.  When I brought this up to Chris she was excited about the idea: the problem with having so many organizations working on the Southside is that it can be hard to remember just what each one does!

Then, today I dug into the Adult World Language circ reports Michael had sent me.  After a more thorough Excel help search I figured out how to un-merge the cells and sort by total circulation numbers.  10.5% of the non-fiction collection has never circulated, while only 5.7% of the fiction collection has never been checked out (granted, the non-fiction section [2,230 items] is around three times larger than the fiction section [702 items]).  It was interesting to see how well the popular non-fiction topics matched up with what I have read about Spanish-language collection development for both my Independent Study and our project in 450: ESL, health, family, GED, self-help, and spirituality items were all among the most circulated.  On the fiction side of things, Latino authors and translated genre books (Romance, Thriller, Mystery) and Classics were the most popular, with translations of more "Mainstream Fiction" titles (Room, High Fidelity, The Help) proving significantly less popular.  It was rewarding to be able to think back to my collection development project for 450 and realize that I actually had done a pretty good job in my selection choices!