1. Creating the Full-Service Homework Center in Your Library

Cindy Mediavilla is a consummate librarian and an acknowledged authority on homework centers. Several years of examining programs around the U.S. have gone into her new book, a tremendous nuts-and-bolts guide for librarians looking to set up or improve a homework center of their own. Creating the Full-Service Homework Center in Your Library is rich with descriptions of a wide variety of centers--some well-funded, and others operating on a shoestring or no budget at all--and timely contact information. You can order the book from its publisher, the American Library Association, at HERE.

Here's an excerpt:

2. ALA annual conference workshops: Establishing Library Services for Spanish-Speaking Communities

From: Susana Hinojosa <shinojos@library.berkeley.edu>
Subject: REFORMA program at ALA Annual, Sat. June 16th

REFORMA Children's and Young Adult Services Committee is sponsoring the following series of programs at the ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco.

Note: These programs were inadvertently omitted from the preliminary program. Please distribute the information widely.

Are you a librarian needing to provide services to Spanish speaking patrons? Don't know where to start? Then have we got something for YOU!

BIENVENIDOS! Establishing Library Services for Growing Spanish Speaking Communities.
Even if you don't speak Spanish you CAN do it! Learn from the experts! Bilingual storytime programs, crafts, "where" and "what" to buy for Spanish-speaking children and adults, outreach, literacy ...we've got you covered. Librarians who do not speak Spanish are especially welcome.

This series of programs is scheduled Saturday, June 16th. Location TBA.

Part I- Children's services
9-10:30 a.m.      Collection development and bilingual storytime.
Learn "where" and "what" to buy for your new Spanish language children's collection. We'll also show you how to do a bilingual story program. Handouts will be provided.
Presenters: Maria Mena, LeRoy Collins Leon County Public Library, Tallahassee, Fl; Diana Borrego and Lorena Flores, San Jose Public Library, CA; Maria Kramer, San Mateo City Library, CA; Armando Ramirez, Biblioteca Latinoamericana, San Jose Public Library, CA.

11:30-12:30 a.m.      Latino children's crafts.
Crafts are always a welcome program. Learn how to do easy, fun crafts. Handouts and easy-to-follow instructions will be provided.
Presenters: Diana Borrego and Lorena Flores, San Jose Public Library, CA; Ana Pavon, S.F.Public Library, CA

Part II - Adult Services
2-4 p.m.         Collection Development.
Answers to the why, what, where of Spanish language material acquisiton for adults: fiction, nonfiction,"fotonovelas" and magazines, even music!
Presenters: Rita Torres, San Jose Public Library, CA; Elissa Miller, Arlington Co. Public Library, MD; Ina Rimpau, Newark Public Library, NJ; Diana Morales, Houston Public Library, TX; Ben Ocon, Salt Lake City Public Library, UT

4:30-5:30 p.m.               Outreach and programming.
What kinds of programs and outreach efforts are most effective in helping Spanish speaking families become loyal library users?
Presenters: Priscila Leni, San Jose Public Library, CA; Jon Sundell, Forsyth County Public Library, Winston-Salem, NC; Marcela Villagran, Multnomah County Public Library, Portland, OR.

3. The Críticas contest

Vicki Novak of the Maricopa Country Library District in balmy Phoenix, AZ won a couple books, including one from Cuba, by correctly identifying Flaco's reviews in the first issue of Críticas, the new quarterly guide to Spanish-language booksellers, distributors, and titles. The magazine has mounted its main story, a practical librarians' guide to Spanish-language bookbuying, on its site at http://www.libraryjournal.com/criticasdistributors.asp. If you want to win a couple kids' books (and you aren't Vicki Novak) then get your hands on a copy of the magazine and tell me the titles reviewed therein by your fellow SOLista Barbara Bibel of Oakland. Oh, right--don't be Barbara Bibel, either, if you want to win the books.

4. Kevin Starr ponders diversity

California's State Librarian did an unusual, Ranganathan-esque thing when appointed to the post: he decided to go to library school (are you reading this, James "Coke Is It" Billington?) The noted historian's op-ed piece in yesterday's Los Angeles Times begins, "The future of California, according to Census 2000, will not look like a scene from 'Gidget' or the cover of a Beach Boys album. Rather...it will, in cultural terms, be predominantly Latino and Asian."

He's not talking exclusively about the Golden State, of course. You can read "California Resettled" at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/20010421/t000033970.html (and if you do so within 13 days, it'll still be free for the reading...)     

5. Carlos Fuentes

In town to receive the 2001 Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award, Carlos Fuentes gave a reading today in the Central Library downtown and dazzled Flaco and a packed house with his passion, artistry, and wit. He read from works old and new--including, from the recent La frontera de cristal story collection, his sketch of José Francisco, the language-saturated Chicano who smuggled literature back and forth across the U.S.- Mexico border on his motorcycle 'so that everyone would get to know one another better...love one another a little more.'

Fuentes had harsh words for Carlos Abascal, Mexican Secretary of Labor whose complaints about the novel Aura being assigned at his daughter's school led to the dismissal of a 23-year-old teacher. The great writer condemned the firing, but sarcastically thanked Abascal for making Aura a bestseller throughout Mexico: "I've asked him to become my literary agent!"

A final thought from the great trilingual author "I always welcome contact with other cultures: it enriches me."