FIL, Guadalajara International Book FAir

 Every year for 21 consecutive years, Guadalajara has been the host of the largest Spanish language book fair in the world: FIL, the Guadalajara International Book Fair. For three full days librarians from all over the world select the newest and hottest materials in Spanish. Each year the fair celebrates a country, this year it celebrates Colombia, the land of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

An agreement between the American Library Association and FIL organizers makes possible for 150 librarians from the USA to attend the fair, stay at a hotel for 3 nights and receive certain amount of money towards airline tickets. 

The fair is a who’s who of publishers of Spanish language materials, distributors and librarians serving Latinos and the Spanish-speaking. If you have any business with Spanish language world (even if you are a publisher from Japan), you want to be there. Publishers of materials in Spanish from around the globe host pavilions and booths to exhibit the newest, hottest, just out-of-the-press publications. Distributors of materials flood the halls of the fair looking for materials requested by librarians looking, for example, for the most recent publications from Puerto Rico, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Uruguay or any other Latin American country.

For a number of years I attended the fair and I loved it. It is an exhausting exercise where for 3 days one selects books from 9:00 am to 5:00pm, but at the same time it is so exciting; there are a myriad of books, CDs, DVDs and databases to see! (Librarian alert!) Besides that, there are many colleagues with whom tour the fair, attend book signings, publisher’s receptions and exchange ideas.

FIL is hands-down the best event to purchase Spanish language books. The best way to order and receive books is to work with a distributor. They know which publishers and books have distributing rights in the States. Distributors can find the best deals and I know of one that can find *any* title published in any Latin American country.  I know there are many good distributors because after I stopped attending Guadalajara I met many of them, but back then I personally worked with -in strict alphabetical order-Bilingual, Brodart (former Books on Wings), Lectorum, and Libros sin Fronteras (no longer exists). All of them are wonderful and work with a million publishing houses. 

This year instead of attending the fair, I am attending an IFLA/FAIFE workshop in Connecticut and New York: two days in CT and one day in NY at Queens Library. Still, I am thinking of my colleagues getting ready to start work tomorrow, the first day of the shopping spree, Monday, November 26 when at 9:00 a.m. the doors of the fair will open to show a magical world of pavilions holding the most wonderful and newest books in Spanish.  

Thank You Day

Tomorrow, November 22: Thank You Day. Thanksgiving in the States.

Wish you all have a wonderful day enjoying the company of family and friends.

Any day is a good day to be thankful but apparently, this is the nicest day for ‘reminiscing all that has happened in our life, being thankful for the wonderful blessings that we have and hoping for even more blessings to come.’

I have many things to be thankful for: love, health, work, family and crazy/lovable friends.

I won’t forget to say a prayer for those in need, hungry or hurting. As Alanis Morisett said, Thank U

How bout me not blaming you for everything
How bout me enjoying the moment for once
How bout how good it feels to finally forgive you
How bout grieving it all one at a time

How bout no longer being masochistic
How bout remembering your divinity
How bout unabashedly bawling your eyes out
How bout not equating death with stopping

Jon Bon Jovi put it very romantically, between you and me and that old broken street light, Thank you for loving me

It’s hard for me to say the things
I want to say sometimes
There’s no one here but you and me
And that broken old street light
Lock the doors
We’ll leave the world outside
All I’ve got to give to you
Are these five words

Wicked Movies

Lately I’ve been too busy studying, reading, writing and traveling. But, hey! I got to watch a couple of good movies and thought of letting you know which ones I think are worth a trip to the cinema.

Watched:

Vigo Mortensen is marvelous in Eastern Promises .  Absolutely brilliant. Ever since I saw him in A History of Violence, I thought that he’d win an Oscar. Russian accent made scary-sexy!

Love in the Time of Cholera with Javier Bardem, Benjamin Bratt and Giovanna Mezzogiorno is based on the novel of the same name by the great Latin American writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I read the book many moons ago. Today when I watched the movie, I recognized characters and situations. I must admit that I am not too fond of watching movies based on novels, but this one was good and I liked it.

My to-watch-movies:

What would Jesus buy?  – The Shopocalypse is coming… be afraid, very afraid of X-mas $hopping: apparently evil stuff…

 American Gangster - Confession: only watching it because Denzel Washington is in it. Can’t help it.

Into the Wild - Boy starts walk in South Dakota. Boy dies in Alaska. What can I say-  I like tragedies and drama ;)

Garcia’s on Fire!

Garcia  is my last name.

As per Frequently Occurring Surnames from Census 2000- a US Census Report released on 11/16/07-  Garcia is the #8 surname in the United States; Rodriguez is #9.

For the first time ever, two Hispanic surnames are among the top 10 in the nation. Demographers say that it might be the first time that a non-Anglo name was amonth the 10 most common in the nation. Cracking the list means how strong the Latino migration has gotten into everyday American culture (NY Times 11/17/07). The numbers have elevated Hispanics among the standard American names. The reality of our nation is that Hispanics living in the USA account for almost 13 percent of the total population and the new list of top 10 names shows it.

A must: recruiting staff that reflects our diverse communities

This Tuesday, November 20 Webjunction is presenting a webinar aimed to discuss ways of tackling the issue of recruiting staff that reflects our diverse communities. Why the importance? Read my guest post on Webjunction’s blog.

There are a few points to consider:

• Ever increasing ethnically diverse communities.               
• Baby boomers retiring within 10 years.
• Low percentage of librarians from Latino, Asian, African-American, Asian and Pacific Islander, American Indian heritage.

This is the time to take action. Before the baby boomers retire, we must recruit and train new librarians from ethnically diverse backgrounds.

Don’t miss Recruiting for Diversity this Tuesday, 11/20/07 at 1:00 pm (EST New York Time)

Chronicles of the traveling librarian

It has been two weeks since the last time I posted a message. This traveling librarian did it again. As the newest member of the legendary library club using the celebrity librarian space shuttle, I was able to witness various events.

First, congrats once again to everybody’s favorite walkers who ended their 18-month adventure last November 2. Well done and hope you don’t have to do it again Check out a cool article published on Library Journal, November 1st issue: Walking the Library System - Publishing houses look at this because the book is coming up and a good publishing house is needed…it will be a  smashing hit!

Second, onto Mexico City: FAIFE’s Paul Sturges, Barbara Jones and I presented a workshop titled IFLA/UNESCO Internet Manifesto Guidelines. It was a wonderful event where librarians from different regions in Mexico participated. We had really good discussions.  A really neat thing is that one of the librarians attending the workshop will present a talk about it at the upcoming Guadalajara International Book Fair. This is the second workshop of its nature in Latin America. The first one in Costa Rica, attended by librarians from 14 countries, was widely popular. A guest-talk about the topic was also presented by me last July in Brazil.

Mexico City has beautiful buildings reflecting old-time Spanish and French architecture. Two interesting museums are the Frida Kahlo Museum (located at the house where she and Diego Rivera lived) and the Bellas Artes Museum. With 19.2 million people (2005), the city has millions of cars and grey skies. Pollution is a serious problem which  gave me a sexy voice I didn’t need to present the workshops and a sinuses complication that I am still fighting.  Nevertheless, I had a great time.

Next, returned to New York to send a contribution to Salvador Avila (Las Vegas Public Library and ALA Councilor) for a publication coming out in June 2008. I know it will be great for the profession, particularly for information professionals serving Latinos and the Spanish speaking.  Go, Salvador! (Between you and me, he is superb at what he does!)

A guest-blog entry about Recruiting for Diversity was sent to Webjunction. It should be up within the next few days. The Recruiting for Diversity webinar is set for Tuesday, November 20. Don’t miss it!

All for now. More later…  

Recruiting for Diversity

November Webinar: Recruiting for Diversity

Tuesday, November 20

1:00-2:30pm EST (New York time)

Many libraries are struggling to make their workforce reflect the diverse population of patrons they serve. Join us on for a special ninety-minute webinar to learn about recruiting and building a multicultural workforce. Guest speakers Loida Garcia-Febo, Queens Library, Tracie Hall, Assistant Dean, Dominican University GSLIS, Luis Chaparro, REFORMA President-Elect, and Jerome Offord, Jr., Director of Diversity Initiatives for the Association of Research Libraries will share library recruitment best practices, tips and success stories.

For more information on the webinar series, visit Spanish Outreach – In Depth where you’ll find a schedule of future sessions, instructions for joining the online webinars, archives of the sessions, and related resources.

Webinar presented by Webjunction

The Librarians = TV show…

Just today I got an email with a link to the website of a new TV show: The Librarians. Eh?!  Yes, it is a new show on ABC Australia. It starts tonight October 31, 2007 = Halloween. Great day to start a librarians’ show. Love ‘em for that.  I am writing this at 12:50pm EST (NYC time) which means that my colleagues in Australia must have watched the show.  I can’t wait to hear their reaction.

I did watch this week’s episode here.  My first impressions: I don’t like the way the director of the library is portrayed; she is not fun. On that episode, she is a bitter, uncool matron, not-customer friendly, profiles customers, biased, wears sensible-everything, and has absolutely no sense of humor. This woman barely smiles, but she does have a crush on a hot library staff that she decides to starts tutoring: he has to follow her everywhere and that is a bit interesting. I don’t like the director’s character but laughed a lot due to all the stereotypes.

The rest of the library staff look like a regular bunch with various characteristics. One of the staff is in a wheelchair due to an accident: while at a trust-your-coworker game, the library director was looking at the behind of The Hot Staff and dropped a rope holding the now-wheelchair bound staff. Bad stuff. Anyways, there was a promising spicy act: a new woman starts working at the library and for her interview she wore a hot-pink, tight, Halter-type dress. Hot. Let’s see.

In general, I think the show touches in too many library/librarians stereotypes. But at the same time, I have enough sense of humor to make fun of librarians so I am not too outraged. The thing that really bothered me was the biased, profiling characteristic given to the library director’s character. [She ask a staff addressing customers in other language than English to stop talking to 'your friends' and turns off a computer being used by one of these 'friends' justifying everything with being aware of terrorism.] The show includes a sex/nude scene and of course, it has been rated. But, hey! It is the first-ever TV show about librarians. I know about other TV shows where the lead character was a librarian, but none where most of the action takes place at a library like this week’s episode.

Let’s give it a chance. Let’s watch some more, analyze why they portray librarians like this or that, totally tear it apart, post endless emails on listervs, write letters to the TV station for them to change the biased-profiling library director character, and then watch some more. Wish I could watch it here in NYC…