According to a national survey of librarians, Mexican immigrants are the largest Hispanic population served by libraries, and immigration law, health and medicine, and how-to titles are the Spanish-language books that register the most demand.
The survey was commissioned by Críticas, an English-language review of Spanish-language literature published by Reed Business Information (which also owns Publishers Weekly). The questionnaire was mailed to 1,000 librarians (600 paying Críticas subscribers and 400 nonpaying subscribers) in locations around the country with significant Hispanic populations. The survey received 235 complete responses, with an overall 24% response rate (35% for paid subscribers and 6% for nonpaying subscribers).
The respondents reported that the biggest problems in building a Spanish-language collection are inadequate inventory offered by vendors, titles that are often out-of-stock and slow shipments. But the survey also suggests that even librarians in the Midwest have recognized a growing Hispanic population and are optimistic that their budgets will increase to serve new immigrant needs. Of the total respondents, 40% reported increased budgets (an average increase of about 12%) for their Spanish-language collections and expect more increases in the next two years, and 22% said their libraries would spend $10,000 or more on Spanish-language materials in this fiscal year. The survey discloses that 10% of the librarians expect to purchase more than 1,000 Spanish-language titles for their libraries this year alone, and on average the librarians polled expect to purchase about 400 titles for their collections in 2002.
Librarians reported that how-to, health and medicine, children's and general fiction are the categories with the deepest collections. Spanish-language titles on legal and immigration issues, biographies and computer books have high demand but are poorly represented in library collections. Book reviews and publisher and wholesaler catalogues are used most often to help librarians make purchasing decisions. Most respondents buy their Spanish-language titles through such wholesaler/distributors as Baker & Taylor (81%), Lectorum Publications (63%), Libros Sin Fronteras (56%) and Ingram Library Services (44%).
Of the responding librarians, 86% have Spanish-language collections and pointed to Hispanics of Mexican descent as the largest Spanish-language population served. Most of the survey's respondents were from California (14%), Texas (11%) and Illinois (10%), reflecting "what we already knew about Spanish-language collections," said Críticas editor Adriana Lopez. "California, Texas and Chicago have always been hubs for the Latino population and now places such as Colorado, Iowa and small cities are seeing an increase in Hispanics." There were surprisingly low response rates from such Latino centers as New York (6%) and Florida (2%).
Look for an in-depth report on the library survey in the July/August issue of Críticas.
