LM_NET 09/09/98: No Subject

From: Carol Harma <charma@EFN.ORG>
egarding how to catalog bilingual books.
Thanks for all the input.

I put mine with the subject.  It helps to find material for students
that are not proficient in English.

This is my 6th year in a bilingual elementary school. The first year, we
had only about 20 books so they were on one shelf for ease of finding them.
When the collection filled two shelves, we decided to move
E-FIC-non-fiction-biog to the first shelf of each section. Though my
supervisor feels they should be interfiled, I feel this would lead to lots
of confusion for all students. The teachers wanted all to be in one
location, but I compromised so that the bilingual students will learn that
there are different areas of the library, not just 2 shelves for them. Our
collection as we enter the 6th year is pitifully small as we have had only
$1000 dollars to grow it in addition to regular small book budget.
If you are more proficient in Spanish than I am, you have probably realized
that the articles el, la, un, una, los, las should be dropped in cataloging
as a, an, the. Just pointing that out because it took me several years to
realize that. The books which are precatalogued by jobbers often come with
article as part of title on the disk.

Personally, I prefer ALL books to be shelved by subject, rather than
by language. My last school had many German, Latin, Greek and Hebrew
books, and all were shelved by subject, rather than language.


I struggled with the same question 5 years ago. I decided to integrate the
Spanish with the English language books in all areas except Easy Fiction.
We identify the books with a blue spine tape so that they can be found
easily on each shelf. As all our students are learning Spanish, this has
encouraged the non native speakers to try books they might never have tried
if the books were in segregated section. And, Spanish speakers are now more
likely to try English language books since they are right next to the
Spanish ones!

I am the librarian of a small elementary school in Houston, TX
with a majority Hispanic population.  I have a growing selection of
Spanish language materials.
   I share your concern with putting all Spanish materials at 463,
which several of the jobbers do.  That makes no more sense to me than
putting all English titles in 423.  My colleagues and I have several
shades of opinion on handling a bilingual collection, but that is one
area on which we all agree.  One friend believes in intershelving the
Spanish and English titles.  I don't like that, especially in a
collection that caters to young readers; my first graders and many of
my second graders are not able at first glance to tell which language
their books are in, and I think they ought to be getting materials in
a language they can read (or at least, if they don't, they should know
what they are getting!).
   An unresolved issue I have is what to do with the cataloging
itself; should subject headings for Spanish books also be in Spanish?
It would seem so, but while I can barely read enough Spanish to tell
what a book is about, I certainly don't have the skills to do subject
analysis in it.
   To summarize, I give my Spanish materials the same call numbers I
would if they were in English, with an "SP" prefix, and shelve them
separately.  My cataloging records are in English, however (except for
the title, of course).  I would be interested in a hit on what others
think about this.

 When we began purchasing bilingual books, we did put all the books in the
400's.  I now think that may not have been wise for several reasons.
First, the children could be learning the correct organization for a
library in Spanish by using our regular system, second that little 400
corner becomes very crowded, third some students pretended they could read
in English to avoid be "labeled" ,  and last, the student's transition
would be smoother if they hadn't had to learn two ways (400's and
standard).  Also, as the bilingual collection gets really large
it gets harder and harder to organize.
We are now cataloging our nonfiction Dewey bilingual books but not the
Fiction and Easy's. We will probably make a move in that direction some
time this year.  Our district is 52 schools and we do have centralized
processing.  So that does help.  We do use an automated system so everyone
must move in the same direction for the purposes of continuity.  That's not
all that easy to achieve.


We intersperse our Spanish and French language books in the appropriate
Dewey area.  It just seemed logical at the time and it has worked fine.


I was taught that they should be interspersed, which I have found works
beautifully.  First of all, when they are all in the same area and you
have a Spanish or ESL class, you would end up with a logjam if they were
all in the 400s.  Also, students end up seeing the whole library when
the books are spread out.  You are not segregating the Spanish speakers
to one area.  In addition, when they are ready to try the book in
English, it's right there, next to the Spanish.
        Two preparation warnings.  1) Of course dictionaries, etc., will remain in
the 400s.  2) Make *sure* you have some kind of spine label so the Spanish
language books can be seen at a glance.  (Even with that, I
still get some non-Spanish readers who accidentally grab the Spanish
version.)

That's a good question.....all my native language books are in the
800's, under the specific language!
Let me know!


I worked in a middle school with a Bilingual program - I
had six classes coming in regularly, and their teachers allowed them to
select a fiction book in Spanish as well as one in English (I had hi-lo
books for them).  Also, they had occasional need for non-fiction
resources in Spanish.  I kept the Spanish fiction and non-fiction as
separate collections, cataloging them by subject with the prefix SP,
e.g. SP F DIC  or SP 599 AND.


I work in a middle school in NYC with about a 90% Hispanic population,
many of whom are recent immigrants and prefer to read in Spanish. I
shelve the books in Dewey order in a separate Spanish section. This
works best for my population. I know other people shelve the Spanish
books integrated in Dewey order with the English language books, but I
cannot see any reason to shelve them all in the 400's.


I do not know the *right* answer but this is what I would do:
If the books are to serve a Spanish-speaking population, I would
interfile them with the regular collection for easy access.
If the books are to serve the students of a Spanish foreign language
class, I might leave them in the 400's.
Professionally, they probably do belong interfiled??

I work at a high school site, but all of our books in Spanish are
cataloged depending on what the book is about and not in category 400.
We identify books in Spanish or in French with specifically colored
strips adjoining the call number. It works fine.



Anne Anderson
aanderson@lakes.ring.com
KidsConnect Volunteer &
Elementary Media Specialist
Whitmer Human Resource Center (WHRC)
60 Parkhurst, Pontiac, MI 48342
City of Pontiac Schools, Pontiac, MI

"Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on
the mind."
                                                        --Plato

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Subject: ELEM: keypals

Hi folks,
        A 3rd grade teacher at a small country school where I work one day
a week is doing a unit on Communication and I suggested having kids
involved in e-mail.  Is there a 3rd grade teacher in another part of the
country who might be interested in something similar.  We aren't
interested in matching individual kids but communicating with another
class--ie a different student might write to the class each day.  Hope one
of you can help.
Carol Harma, Thurston and Mohawk El., Springfield, OR charma@efn.org

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