Latinos, immigration, and library services

by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

By 2010, about 47 million of the U.S. population will be Hispanic according to REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-speaking.

That represents a large slice of the market for library services. Consequently, REFORMA is teaming with the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM) to present “Latinos, Immigration Issues, and Library Services” at the June 2010 annual conference of the American Library Association in Washington, D.C.

There couldn’t be a better venue for considering this topic and attracting the attention of our nation’s lawmakers.

REFORMA bases its figure on U.S. Census Bureau projections. The Census Bureau, at its online website, projects that total U.S. population will be about 316 million in 2010. That means Hispanics will comprise almost 15 percent of our nation’s population next year.

EMIERT, the Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table of the American Library Association is spreading the word that REFORMA and SALALM members should send presentation proposals—including title, description, name of speaker, and email address—to EMIERT representative Roberto Delgadillo at <rdelgadillo@lib.ucdavis.edu> by December 30.

REFORMA and SALALM note that speakers will be responsible for their expenses to attend the ALA conference.

For more information: “Why libraries buy books in Spanish”