Libraries Read Signs of Change, Go Ethnic

John Perkins, Inglewood’s head librarian since 1962, has a rule of thumb about the relationship between the faces of library visitors and the books he must stock on the shelves: When one changes, so must the other.

When the city’s population shifted from white to black years ago, the library’s collection expanded to include materials on black issues. Today, as a large population of immigrants from Mexico, Cuba and Central America moves into the city, Perkins is rearranging the shelves again.

The library is hiring a Latino librarian and staff member this year to handle a $116,000 expansion of its Spanish-language periodical collection. The new Hispanics Services Division was created when librarians began noticing the many Spanish-speaking visitors and the popularity of Latino-oriented materials. Latinos make up more than a third of the city’s population.

“A library is always changing,” said Adalin Torres-Zayas, who will manage the Latino collection. “If it doesn’t change, it just becomes an empty building.”

The libraries in other South Bay cities also are adapting to ethnic changes.

The Torrance Public Library has added to its Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese collections in recent years, and a study on the library’s future recommends more emphasis on Asian-language materials.

The Carson Regional Library, which is part of the county library system, has expanded its dial-a-story service to include children’s stories in English, Spanish and Japanese. The library offers orientation tours in English and Spanish.

“What libraries are trying to do is base their collection on their population,” said Jim Buckley, the head librarian in Torrance.

Among Inglewood’s plans are a language lab to teach Latinos English, more books, newspapers, magazines, videos and compact disks in Spanish, and new bilingual library information brochures and maps.

Inglewood library officials are planning to survey families in predominantly Latino neighborhoods to determine what the community wants from the library. They also hope to lure to the stacks Latinos who may not currently use the library.

“If you come from a country in Latin America, the only contact you have with a library is in the university,” said Torres-Zayas, a Puerto Rico native who is the library’s head of circulation. “The public library system is very new in Latin America. People are not used to going to the library. We have to say, ‘This is what we can do for you.’ ”

Inglewood’s Spanish collection already includes more than 4,000 book titles, 25 magazines and newspapers and 400 records, paperback books and pamphlets.

Some of the most popular items are English-as-a-second-language materials, comic books for children with such titles as “Pato Donald” (“Donald Duck”) and “Conan el Barbaro” and romance comic books for adults.

In conversations with visitors, Torres-Zayas said, she has found a need for more how-to books on such subjects as helping children with their studies, disciplining children and preparing for careers.

Eduardo Garcia, 27, a native of El Salvador who was checking out a stack of 15 Spanish-language books on a recent morning, said he fully supports expanding the Inglewood collection. Among his books: a history of Rome, an encyclopedia of medical terms and a biography of King Juan Carlos I of Spain.

Hector Carrio, the bilingual coordinator for the Inglewood Unified School District, said the library can be an important resource for newly arrived immigrants. He welcomed the proposed expansion and said providing reading material in Spanish for Latino youngsters keeps them in touch with their culture and helps to preserve their self-esteem.

Getting newly arrived Latino immigrants into the library with Spanish-language materials will also eventually help them learn English, Carrio said.

Torres-Zayas said the essence of the expansion is to make the Inglewood library more welcome to people from other cultures. As part of that effort, about 60% of the staff has completed a short course on basic Spanish phrases.

The staff members didn’t learn any arcane vocabulary or the conjugations of irregular verbs, Torres-Zayas said, but “now they know how to say, ‘I don’t speak Spanish, but I can get someone who does.’ ”

While Inglewood is beefing up its Spanish-language collection, other libraries in the South Bay are concentrating on different populations.

In Torrance, where the 1980 census counted 20% of the population as Asian and 8% as Latino, there are 400 items in the Spanish collection and between 2,500 and 3,000 in Asian languages. In recent months, Chinese-language materials have been checked out more often than other items in the Torrance foreign-language collection, followed by Japanese.

Along with Spanish, the Carson library has materials in Hindi, Samoan, Korean, Tagalog and several other languages.

“Every culture, every ethnic group, can find information about themselves in our library,” said Billie Frierson, the community library manager in Carson. “If we don’t have it, we can find it. We’re here as a resource for everyone.”