JPRS And FBIS Translations: Polycentrism At The Reference Desk

This paper discusses the potential and responsibility of the Reference Librarian to contribute a polycentric perspective to information seekers. Because our society is essentially monolingual, library users and librarians alike tend to be ethnocentric in their retrieval and digestion of information. However, through the judicious use of foreign materials in English translation our monolingual society and the narrowness that it breeds could be remediated, if not overcome.