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Glenbrook South High School Library was thrilled to receive the RAILS My Library Is… grant this past school year. Our focus was and is on supporting our growing multilingual populations. For many years, our school library has had only a small Spanish-language collection alongside our English collection. In the past couple of years, our multilingual population, specifically Russian, Mongolian, Ukrainian, and Korean, has skyrocketed. As such, we decided we needed not only a Spanish collection, but also to include the other languages spoken in our hallways, ensuring we are meeting the needs of ALL of our students in a small, yet intentional way.
Getting Started
Surprisingly, this task was not as easy as it seemed. We started by doing what we do best - research! We met with sections of our Multilingual Learners (ML) program students and teachers, went to the public library to learn about their procedures, visited a couple of high school libraries, reviewed best practices for multilingual collections, and met with our Assistant Director of Multilingual Learners. After collecting all of that information, we looked for vendors. Some languages were easy to find, and some were not. The ordering process itself was also time-consuming. If we were lucky enough to find some titles through Amazon, most deliveries were pretty quick. If we went through another company, it could take up to two months to get the books. In the end, due to circumstances beyond our control, we were only able to find titles in Russian, Ukrainian, and Korean, not in Mongolian. Obviously, this is not what we had hoped for, but we will keep trying!
Cataloging and Shelving
Once the books arrived, we had to figure out the best way to catalog them. Some were in OCLC, and some were not. We spoke with some of our ML speakers and asked for their advice on certain words and phrases to make our catalog records accurate and useful. We also connected with our public library to discuss their procedures. We weeded our Spanish collection and collapsed a couple of other collections to make room for our new and improved shelving area. We purchased new signage and shelf markers to highlight the section we called “World Languages.”
Promotion
Since it took so long to receive, organize, and catalog all of the titles, we haven’t had much time for promotion so close to the end of the year. We plan to start next year by visiting the ML classes to showcase the collection, gather feedback on our initial purchases, and take recommendations for future purchases. We will do a book browse, letting them see all of the titles we have purchased in our World Language collection. We want our ML students to see that they are supported.
Impact
This was not a quick or easy process, but we want to do what is in our students' best interest, now and in the future. We will continue to look for ways to acquire Mongolian-language books as well. We want these titles and our future growth in this collection to make students feel seen, heard, and respected. We hope to continue building this collection with the help of all of our stakeholders.
Today's blog post was written by Christi Shaner (she/her), Head Librarian at Glenbrook South High School.
This project was made possible by the My Library Is... Grant.