Today's post is from Dale McNeil, Director of Community Library Services Department at Queens Library (formerly of Dallas Public Library):

Many public libraries in Texas are masters at serving customers who speak English and customers who speak Spanish. And may are experienced professionals at serving customers who speak other languages as well. Serving these communities is nothing new (I remember a large Japanese-speaking community when I worked for Houston Public Library many years ago).

But there are challlanges and it's useful to talk about them with colleagues.

I'll review just a little data about languages in Texas, talk a little about the Queens Library, and provide some resources. Fifty minutes isn't long, so I'll start with questions from the audience. I do have a presentation, but it will just be available on the TLA website after the conference.

Be sure to either attend or look at the handout for "Serving Diverse Populations: Building an International Collection" which provides contact information for publishers/distributors of international language materials.

Just briefly, to serve populations speaking several languages:
1) Build political/stakeholder support.
2) Know the community: who's in your service area? what languages do they read? (reading knowledge and speaking knowledge are not the same)
3) Develop a plan and include priorities: which populations can your library serve? what services will be provided (books? DVDs? magazines? programs? classes?)
4) Partner with community agencies/media
5) Get the word out
6) Continually assess success

All during this process, you'll want to learn as much as you can about the customs, history, languages, education, and so on of the particular community you're serving. For example, people who read Chinese may be from mainland China, from Hong Kong, from Taiwan, or from many other places. The *spoken* languages of Chinese readers may be very different. Reasons for immigration may be very different. As librarians or library workers, we are mostly very curious and very polite; those are the two main qualities needed to interact successfully with people from other cultures. We're often not quite as good at *asking* questions as we are at answering them, but that's easy enough to learn.

I hope you have a great time at the TLA conference in Dallas, a city that was home to me for 10 wonderful years. And if you're able to come to my session, I hope you'll be inspired a bit, have a laugh or two, and learn a little something.

Serving Multi-Lingual Populations
Wednesday, 11:00 to 11:50am