American Libraries
Foreignized to Help Aliens

stead of assimilating to American ways, immigrants and their children are foreignizing the communities in which they live, even causing English-language books to compete for shelf space in local libraries that are stocking up on foreign-language volumes.

The way many local libraries are serving immigrant populations reveals the extent to which America's traditional culture is receding to accommodate newcomers.

In the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., where immigrants have established extensive foreign colonies, libraries already strained by budget limitations are dividing up their resources among different and competing ethnic groups who demand books and services in their own languages.

At the Woodrow Wilson Library in Falls Church, the books, tapes, and videos available for loan are organized not by age or subject, but by language, according to the Washington Post. Children's books like Barbar the Elephant and Paddington Bear are available in Vietnamese, while Al Hayat, an Arabic-language newspaper hangs on a rack above Tiempos del Mundo, a Mexican paper, the Post reported.

In Virginia's Fairfax County, foreign-language books and other materials are now the fastest-growing collection in the county's libraries. The Post reported that the library system's 3,630 Vietnamese books were checked out 34,900 times last year.

As a result, libraries are hiring employees who speak foreign languages to help out the foreigners coming in. Often, the libraries in cities heavily impacted by immigration serve as a kind of tax-subsidized clearinghouse for welfare services for aliens.

"Robert Soto, a 39-year-old construction worker born in El Salvador, stood in the lobby of the Long Branch library in Silver Spring [Maryland] one morning ... in search of an application for a lottery Montgomery County has scheduled ... for subsidized housing vouchers," the Post reported.

"My English is not so good," Soto said. He planned to arrive at the library when the Spanish-speaking librarian's shift began. "For new immigrant, the library is very, very important," he said.

Immigrants like getting free services. "Many of the new patrons grew up in countries where public libraries were available only to students, or to those who could afford to pay to borrow books. Free access is a surprising privilege to many," said the Post.

Libraries are marshaling their tax-funded resources to serve foreigners in many new ways.

In Gaithersburg, Maryland, another suburb of D.C., the local library hosts concerts for foreigners, including a performance of Chinese music one night, and Latin American music another night.

In Arlington, Virginia, the libraries even send emissaries to immigrant associations to recruit people to use the library services, and have set up satellite offices in immigrant-heavy apartment complexes. "Working with their counterparts in several middle schools, librarians have set up Spanish-language book clubs that meet once a month," the Post said.

Sometimes, immigrants even use the libraries as free day-care facilities for their children.

"For parents whose work shifts spill into evenings and weekends, the library is a safe place for their children," reported the Post. "Last weekend at Woodrow Wilson, a 10 year-old and her 7 year-old brother told a visitor they often spend Saturday afternoons in the library while their mothers cleans houses and their father cleans windows. The children said they came from Guatemala five years ago."

With an air of understatement, the paper noted that, "unattended children can thrust librarians into a role they are not always prepared to handle..."

Library managers and bureaucrats are generally pleased about increased immigrant use of their facilities. The newcomers boost what librarians call the "door count" - the number of people who visit the library. That gives managers a reason to seek greater funding from their local tax jurisdiction, and to create new programs to meet the needs of immigrants.

In Fairfax County, for example, librarians helped start the Fairfax County Library Foundation, established just eight years ago, which has raised $1 million so far for new programs just for immigrants.

No new programs designed for just English-speaking American citizens are planned.

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