Brittany Kelley
BUDA — The Buda Public Library’s Spanish collection will be receiving an upgrade, after securing the Texas Library Grant from the Texas Book Festival.
The grant has been running for years, though the last time the library received it was in the '90s, said Arlyn LaBelle, youth librarian. This year, BPL is one of 70 recipients chosen for $2,500, after applying for the grant in April, for the first time in five years.
“It takes a good understanding of our collection to see what we need. So, for this whole year, in particular, I’ve been redoubling [our] Spanish language collection development in general and doing a lot of work with that. That took a lot of studying of our Spanish language section and I used all of that research to target exactly what we were missing in our collection and what gaps we could fill [in the application],” LaBelle recalled.
The write-up included specifics about what the library needed, the argument for it and a list of books it would purchase, if granted the money.
LaBelle stated that it was an easy decision to choose to expand the Spanish section, as it currently fails to represent the city’s population and was last updated in 2018.
“Around 14% of our residents speak Spanish in their homes and right now, our collection does not reflect that. I think that about 3% of our total collection was Spanish language materials, so that is obviously not ideal,” they said. “This is trying to get that to better reflect our community. We’re especially lacking in new adult stuff and some [young adult (YA)] stuff. Our teen collection for Spanish language was small and some of our adult stuff was a bit older, so it was basically due for a nice, big refreshing. We’re really grateful that we’ll be able to do that.”
The hope is to expand the junior graphic novel and chapter book section, while creating a YA nonfiction and adult fiction section, since those are practically nonexistent, said LaBelle. Of the 3% of Spanish language books, 42% are picture books, so the team is hoping to focus on the older readers. All titles will be available by the fall.
“We are incredibly grateful to the Texas Book Festival and to their partner, the Texas Library Association, for giving us this opportunity to bolster this section. It definitely deserves the little bit of attention that it’s going to be able to get with this grant and it means a lot, especially [because] budgets are tight and every little bit helps. This is a big bit, so it’s wonderful to be able to dedicate the time and love to this section and to grow it, so that it better reflects and serves our community,” LaBelle concluded.
For more information on BPL, visit www.budalibrary.org.
