‘Libraries should be for everyone’
Pequot Library adds its first non-English titles
SOUTHPORT — The rows of bookshelves spanning the Pequot Library pack an array of stories and information. They’ve shared one thing in common, until this year — every title was written in English.
Pequot’s Chief Librarian Christine Catallo said the library has since added about 100 Spanish books and 12 to 15 Hindi titles in the last year after receiving requests to expand its collection in those languages. But Catallo said readers have only checked out two of those books so far.
“This just tells us that we need to get the word out more about these materials,” Catallo said.
She said the circulation desk staff received requests for the book acquisitions from a “handful” of patrons, but they could be indicative of wider interest among readers in the tight Southport community. Catallo said the library added the Spanish books earlier this year and the Hindi books around the late summer or early fall.
“We serve a small community, and it was people who came in pretty regularly,” she said. “And we thought well, if they’re interested I’m sure there are others interested as well.”
Leslie Mahtani, who works in the library services department, brought the books for the Hindi collection after her husband visited a bookstore that was within walking distance from his family’s apartment in Mumbai during a business trip to India. She said the books included fiction by Indian authors, poetry, biographies, translations of English works and one title that an influencer wrote about Indian society.
“Even though our community is homeogeneous, we want to serve everyone,” she said.
But some roadblocks remain in the way of continued growth for the library’s
collection of nonEnglish titles. Catallo said while she can access an online catalog of recommended Spanish titles through the library’s online book vendor, Baker & Taylor, she’s unaware of a similar list existing on the platform for books written in Hindi and Portuguese, which the library has also received requests to add.
She said purchasing Hindi and Portuguese books on other websites would be difficult because she does not speak those languages.
“I could find them on Amazon, but I was sort of like ‘I don’t know what I’m buying,’ ” she said. “I mean I’m sure I could be using Google Translate but I wanted to be 100 percent sure what I was purchasing.”
Nearly 30 percent of Fairfield residents speak a language at home other than English, according to census data from 2021. More than five percent of residents speak Spanish, but less than two percent
speak an Asian or Pacific Islander language. The leading non-English language category is listed as “other Indo-European languages,” which account for nearly eight percent of town residents.
She said she sought advice for creating a Portuguese collection from the public libraries in Wilton, Westport and Norwalk, but they have relied primarily on donations for their respective non-English collections. She said while she hopes to continue to expanding the collection of non-English based on circulation data the library has yet to develop concrete plans to add more Hindi and Portugese titles.
Recommendations and donations from members of the public are welcome, she added.
“I just hope it’s helpful for people because I think libraries should be for everyone,” she said.
Mahtani said the library should follow up with the patrons who requested the non-English
titles to expand the nonEnglish collection and she could ask her husband’s assistant, who is fluent in Portuguese. She said Portuguese novelist José Saramago, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998 would be another avenue for the collection. She said staff could also work with other libraries in Bridgeport or Norwalk, which would reflect high levels of diversity from within their respective communities, adding that understanding the interests of readers is vital for a team of librarians.
“You’ve got to have your finger on the pulse of who’s using them and the kinds of things they’re interested in,” she said.
Catallo said the books cover a variety of genres, mixing between nonfiction, such as autobiography and history, and fiction, including classic literature and modern titles. She added they split between titles originally written in their respective countries and those translated from English, or in the case of one Hindi book, Urdu, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in South Asia .
“It makes me really happy to know that we’re expanding our audience and helping those who maybe necessarily don’t always feel welcome when they walk into a library so I’m hoping that by offering titles in other languages, we’re taking down those barriers,” she said.