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.

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.

If your library serves a Latino population, you'll want this book. It will help you better serve the needs of Spanish-speaking patrons of all ages. The author gives background information on various Hispanic groups, explaining some of the cultural differences that can lead to misunderstanding. She then offers a variety of program and collection building ideas. A list of distributors of Spanish-language materials-books, periodicals, AV materials, computer and other educational resources-is provided, as well as Web site addresses of Spanish-language sites. Vocabulary lists for library and computer-related words and phrases and guidelines for correctly writing Spanish words are also included.

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.