Spanish Language Skills and Sharing Among Nations

Attending the XL Jornadas Mexicanas de Biblioteconomia was a worthwhile stretch for my intermediate Spanish language skills. Although it would have been great to have had a translator and been able to understand some of the finer points, hearing about Mexican libraries first-hand in Spanish by Mexicans in Mexico offers an immediate perspective that I would recommend to anyone.

For example, this morning a representative from OCLC, Bruce Crocco, spoke in English about OCLC's user experience research alongside a distinguished Mexican speaker, Dr. Adolfo Rodriguez Gallardo, who spoke about Mexico´s national consortium catalog for academic libraries, Catalogo Nacional de Bibliotecas Academicas. In his talk, Crocco was concerned about the user´s experience and about improving OCLC´s search algorithm so that it delivers results for two kinds of users, casual users and researchers, most of the time; he feels impacted by the ubiquity of the Google search engine. In his talk, Gallardo showed all the work and cooperation that it takes to create a consortium catalog, he is concerned because his catalog only works for users who have online access. Both catalogs are very successful products.

For American audiences, OCLC is an established bibliographic utility that dates back to the 60's. At American library conferences, OCLC hosts glitzy multimedia productions. Not so in Mexico today. Crocco appeared with a very plain PowerPoint written in Spanish while he talked with a single microphone in English. It was clear that he wanted to increase the use of WorldCat in Mexico, but he did it in a very low-key but good way by offering statistics about how many users searched the catalog in Mexico.

I feel that Bruce Crocco and OCLC would have benefited from the services of a translator, the presence of which would have helped to show respect for the Mexican language speakers in the audience and the country of Mexico. With all the American franchises that line the streets of Acapulco, I couldn´t help wondering about how Mexicans feel about these American businesses really or whether their leaders spoke the Spanish language when they arrived.

For American librarians with Spanish language skills, this conference is a great way to give a talk and talk with Mexican colleagues about research. Short of an "invasion" by Americans at the conference, the sharing of ideas is always good and promotes sharing among nations.