Librarians and library staff may well be the Swiss Army knife of working professionals. But on some days and with some requests from either patrons or administration, you may find you need more than your own personal assortment of skills, techniques, and talents. However, one of the most important skills you can have is the ability to know where to go for help. And there are many ways that NoveList products can help — whether you’re an expert, still learning, or completely out of your depth.
It’s an obvious statement of fact that a community is composed of the many people in it, all with different needs, whether they use the library or not. One barrier to access, perceived or real, is language. Do members of your community, for whom English is not their primary language, feel welcome in your library? Do you have content for them? Do your signs meet their needs? Do you have staff who can speak to them one-on-one?
While we can’t necessarily teach you a new language, we can at least help ensure that your library staff can meet the needs of any Spanish speakers who come to your library, whether you or your colleagues speak Spanish fluently or not. Core Collection en Español, which officially launched earlier this year, is built off the recommendations of librarians working with Spanish-speaking communities across the U.S. It contains fiction and nonfiction for adults, teens, and children. If you’re looking to build a new collection in Spanish or support an existing one, this new database is a must-have.
While the database uses English terminology (genres, reviews, summaries, and so on), the books themselves are in Spanish (with some bilingual picture books!), and often include Spanish-language summaries. Whether you’re looking for picture books for Spanish-speaking parents to read to their kids, juvie nonfiction in support of homework help, literary fiction from Latin America, popular science fiction translated into Spanish, poetry, ESL materials, or business bios, we can help.
Searching and browsing for content within Core Collection en Español is a breeze. It includes:
- Titles both translated to and originally in Spanish
- Reviews where available
- Evaluative excerpts from our selectors
- Recommendation levels
- Cataloging terms you’re used to from other Core Collection and NoveList databases in English.
If you are looking to start, maintain, bulk up, or right-size your collection for Spanish speakers, Core Collection en Español can help. If you want to familiarize yourself with what’s available, the English-language metadata and summaries found within can help. And if you want to market your collection — guess what? The Spanish-language summaries can help. And as the collection continues to add new titles, we can help keep your collection growing too.
Shauna Griffin is a Senior Collection Development Librarian at NoveList. She is currently reading The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow.
