October 12, 2006
New collection puts emphasis on reaching out to new patrons
An event next week at UW Bothell will kick off a new media collection that puts the emphasis on diversity. Called “Community Media.21,” the Oct. 18 event will feature a panel mostly made up of the editors of publications geared to minority group audiences.
Amanda Hornby, the media and technology studies librarian at UWB, organized the event to publicize a new collection she and library staff put together made up of publications like the Seattle Gay News, Colors NW and International Examiner.
Ironic, isn’t it? Housing a collection of diverse publications in the lily-white suburbs. But wait. Bothell and the surrounding Northshore area are not what you might think they are.
“There have been some recent population studies talking about how more and more, immigrants are moving to the suburbs because it’s more affordable,” Hornby said. “At UWB we’re welcoming our first freshman class this year and the demographics show that approximately 35 percent of them are first generation American.”
Given those statistics, Hornby wanted to make sure that the newspapers and periodicals greeting visitors to the library would include those written in other languages and representing divergent viewpoints. She was spurred on when she learned from colleague Suzan Parker that copies of Seattle Gay News had been picked up from the racks of free publications around campus and unceremoniously dumped before they could be read.
“I started having the idea to create a safe place for different types of publications, a safe place for different views to be expressed,” Hornby said. “As the suburbs like Northshore/Bothell get more diverse, I think it’s important for libraries to start meeting the needs of the greater community.”
The small UWB collection of physical publications will be augmented by a Web portal, found at http://www.uwb.edu/library/communitynews/. Many more publications — general interest and specialized, local and beyond — are listed on the site. Also listed are some databases that are good research tools — including some that contain ethnic and “alternative” publications from across the country.
“I think it’s important for students doing research to include some of these publications,” Hornby said. “For example, it would be interesting to see how the immigration debate is played out in diverse publications as opposed to general interest publications.”
Hornby acknowledges that the UWB library will never have a media collection to rival the one at Suzzallo. But they do have a publication that has never had a relationship with any library before. El Mundo, a Spanish language weekly that distributes mainly to restaurants and stores that Latinos patronize, agreed to sell them the library subscription after some intense courting.
The UWB Community Media Collection will of course have a link to the Suzzallo Microform and Newspaper Collection on its site, and the librarian in charge of that collection, Glenda Pearson, says the reverse is also true.
Participants in the panel discussion are George Bakan, editor-in-chief of Seattle Gay News; Tim Harris, executive director of Real Change; Josh Hicks, staffer at Bothell Kenmore Reporter; Naomi Ishisaka, editor-in-chief of Colors NW; and Nhien Nguyen, editor-in-chief of International Examiner. The program is set for 11 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 18 in the UW2 auditorium at UW Bothell.
Several UWB and Cascadia Community College classes will be attending the discussion, but other interested people are welcome as well. A reception with refreshments will be held afterward.
