¡Hola, amigos!

Latinos are the fastest growing population in the United States, and are creating a large bilingual market. Librarians are often eager to attract, serve, and retain Latino patrons, and library services are sorely needed by the Latino community; but it takes more than adding a few Spanish-language books to the collection to meet those needs. Besides the cultural and language barriers library personnel encounter when interacting with this community, libraries generally lack the funding to engage in multicultural advertising as well as the time and specialized personnel to do it. This book provides a practical, easy-to-follow guide to creating a bilingual-friendly facility that will attracts Latino users.

¡Hola, amigos!: A Plan for Latino Outreach offers users a systematic, orderly plan that directs outreach activity with worksheets, discussion reports, and easy-to-follow schedules, and more than 100 marketing ideas, tips, and examples from libraries around the country that can easily be incorporated into day-to-day activities. Many of the strategies can be applied to outreach of other minorities as well.

SUSANA G. BAUMANN, an Argentine American, is the Director of LCSWorldwide Language and Cultural Services, a business she started as a minority-owned home-based translation company in 1996. Through her company, she has successfully worked with corporations, non-profit, and government organizations and has conducted a number of in-service trainings with libraries.