Library Services to Latinos: An Anthology

Latino issues present unique challenges for library and information professionals in the USA and elsewhere. There are large social issues like citizenship, immigration, and integration, usually associated with language, culture and education. For professionals there are issues about resources, services and access, in public and school libraries, in universities and the wider community. Latino here includes Spanish‐speaking ethnic/cultural groups like Chicanos (Mexican Americans), Puerto Ricans and Colombians, Salvadoreans and Guatemalans. Guereña has assembled a useful practical collection of 17 articles/chapters (all original to this book) from US practitioners and academics in the field. Seven key themes are developed: leadership and recruitment (all too few Hispanic practitioners, the adobe ceiling effect), language issues (information resources mainly in English rather than Spanish), cultural issues like decorum, ethnocentrism of indexes; library services to children (collections, services, publishers, distributors); academic libraries (Chicano curricula, inclusiveness); immigrants (a good case study from North Carolina on community networking); outreach (for public and school libraries, citizenship programmes); and electronic resources (Latino Web sites, the librarian’s role, the CLNet virtual community set up in California in 1993: these Web sites will probably appeal most to international readers). Guereña has other books (on Latino librarianship and Latino periodicals), and this work makes a good addition to Barbara Immroth and Kathleen McCook’s Library Services to Youth of Hispanic Heritage (McFarland, 2000), and Camila Alire’s Serving Latino Communities (Neal‐Schuman, 1998). There are important issues here for a profession understaffed relative to user demographics and needs, with transferability to other countries. Few chapters take fire but they are workmanlike, making a book useful for comprehensive professional collections.