Luis is the Manager of the Courtland S. Wilson branch of the New Haven Public Library in Connecticut. He is a member of the Diverse BookFinder Advisory Council.
I was first introduced to the Diverse BookFinder when I met co-founder Anne Sibley O’Brien at a workshop in March 2018. The workshop was sponsored by the Connecticut State Library and centered on the importance of having materials that reflected society. Anne shared her career expertise and work and mentioned the Diverse BookFinder. I participated on a panel with librarians of color to discuss our experiences with diverse books and what libraries can do to support diverse materials.
In the library science field, materials (especially books!) are referred to as “the collection,” which connotes to me the importance of something not only to be found but to be preserved. The questions that the Diverse BookFinder asks us to consider are:
- What are we preserving?
- What is being created?
- What effort do we put in creating collections that appropriately reflect the world we live in?
The most important question that was asked of me and my fellow panelists was:
How can libraries justify spending money on materials that their communities may not want to read?
This is a legitimate issue, as public libraries are often underfunded and even those who believe that all children should find themselves reflected and celebrated in the books they read will face criticism from those who believe that this is “not worth the money.“
I answered this question by highlighting demographic trends in the U.S. Ironically, the country’s new “normal” is reflected by the demographics of my hometown and city where I work: New Haven, CT. In short, formerly “homogeneous” communities are rapidly becoming more diverse.
I highlighted the importance of youth librarians — and by extension children’s materials (especially picture books) — that have the function of increasing children’s understanding of the world. Public libraries that do not buy diverse materials for the children they serve are doing their communities a disservice.
Of course, one simple argument against my answer is that diversifying one’s collection is “easier said than done.” However, I recently had what I would instead call the “opportunity” to do exactly that.
As a Manager of a neighborhood library in a predominantly and historically African American and Latinx (especially Puerto Rican) community, our library has children’s books that reflect these communities, including books in Spanish. However, our neighborhood is currently undergoing a significant demographic shift. In particular, refugee families from Afghanistan are now being resettled here. These families speak limited English and our library did not have any books in Pashto. In this moment, I was reminded of co-founder Krista Aronson’s story of how the Diverse BookFinder came to be. I realized that providing diverse materials to all of the communities who walk through the doors of my library, especially children, is a way to not only increase literacy, but also to promote peace.
Let’s all do our part to better represent the world as it is, so the world can become what it should be.
