Kalona library expanding multilingual collection

KALONA — The Kalona Public Library plans to expand its inventory for Spanish-speaking patrons, according to Director Trevor Sherping.

“I think there’s a reasonably-sized population in town where Spanish is their primary language,” he said. “They feel like — and they’re right — that right now we don’t have anything to maybe serve their needs. So I’m hoping to hear back from them so we can serve them like we do the rest of the community.”

The library currently has a roughly 100-item multilingual collection, but it’s entirely catered toward children. Sherping said the expansion would remedy that.

"We only have a children’s multilingual section, that was created I believe in the summer of 2021,“ he said. ”We heard from some ELL teachers and some Spanish speakers in the community that they wanted some multilingual books, both in English and in Spanish, for our community … the same patrons brought up that we didn’t have any materials for adults.“

Sherping said the library had around $1,000 available from its foundation, enough to roughly double the multilingual collection with new adult books. As staff figure out how to do that, the library is pushing a survey to readers who are fluent in, or would like practice with Spanish.

Survey responses will give the library an outline of whether patrons want books originally written in Spanish, or popular English titles with thorough translations. They’ll also provide feedback about the format: whether patrons want audiobooks or print titles.

“Any time we start a collection, especially that big, it’s always going to include patrons, surveys or us talking to the community,” Sherping said. “Definitely, I need more feedback than normal because of that language barrier.”

Ideally, Sherping said the survey would close at the end of February and books would hit shelves in the spring. That timeline depends on how much feedback the surveys get, however, and how quickly it comes in.

The library’s existing supply of virtual non-English material is more flushed out. Sherping said the expansion would focus solely on physical, in-building materials for checkout.

Expansion to languages other than Spanish is possible, but not the immediate goal, according to Sherping.

"(Spanish) is the language I’m going to start with because I’ve already had feedback and requests about that kind of material,“ he said. ”I’m open to expanding it to other languages, but the first batch is going to be for Spanish speakers.“

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com