From Argentina to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic

I need to catch up with the internship sessions that have actually elapsed to date, so I’m going to join my second and third Collection Development sessions in this one post.

Since I missed the first session, the second one was jam packed with work and information. We went over the domestic approval plan and visited the section in the Acquisitions Department where the books come in. Jesus looked through some of those he had received and went over the criteria for either accepting or returning them to the distributor.

Next I caught up with the Argentinians and did some pre-order searching for books that Jesus had selected in the catalogs for the two major distributors: Nicolas Rossi and Libreria Garcia Cambeiro. Looking through the books that were selected and those that were not was a good way of becoming familiar with the materials that are currently being selected according to the Caribbean and Latin American Studies’ program focus and the professor’s interests. Many, for instance, had to do with colonial relationships in Latin American countries, independence of Latin American countries, Afro culture, urban planning, migration and globalization. There were both monographs and videos and the latter had to be searched for in alternate sources where they are available in the format for the United States’ Zone 1. Step two of this particular assignment will be actually doing some selecting within the catalogs.

Another major part of day two was receiving an order of books that had come from the Puerto Rican distributor. Most of these were books published in the Dominican Republic and we checked them against our list to account for each and their condition. Now I’ve become interested in the history of the Trujillo era and after watching the movie based on Julia Alvarez’s novel “In the Time of the Butterflies” am now reading Mario Vargas Llosa’s “La Fiesta del Chivo.” How can a bibliographer go through so many interesting books and refrain from reading them all? Well, lack of time is a pretty good guess.

Oh, and the day also included some instructions on putting together the bibliography for globalization that’s to be the main project for the term.


From Mexico to French-speaking lands

This keeps getting more interesting. Why doesn’t every librarian want to be a bibliographer?

On the second session we went over Aleph’s acquisitions module and had a brief lesson in all kinds of funds, from available to encumbered to exceeded. We discussed the challenges of ordering from distributors based in several countries as well as from those that take a long time in sending over materials so funds encumbered in one year may be actually lost if the books didn’t get in before the closing of the fiscal year.

Then we were off to Mexico. We explored the major distributors, regional distributors, publishers and publishing centers. Following this, we switched from Spanish to French and did some more pre-order searching in the online database for Aux Amateurs des Livres. Great – interesting books, varied languages, multicultural authors and resources!

Then we had a meeting with Kate Latal, Head of Acquisitions, which was the first of a series of meetings with key library personnel involved with the Acquisitions process. We went over some more of the challenges associated with ordering from international countries, plans for future electronic ordering and a coming upgrade to Aleph.

The semester is going by so fast, it’s time to start cranking out that bibliography. But when? I think I’ll need to dedicate some additional time to that project…