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This year’s Guadalajara International Book Fair brought publishers, wholesalers, librarians, retailers, and the public together in one place to discover and celebrate international publishing. No matter where we travel or who we talk to, we hear the same things from librarians:
World language librarians struggle with obstacles specific to a global market in an English-speaking, American-centric publishing world. Few US publishers have editors fluent in languages other than English, so most world language content from these publishers tend to be translations of titles discovered in English. Many libraries don’t have multilingual collection development librarians, so selecting original titles or even translations outside of the authority attributed to traditional publishers creates risk.
Traditionally, importing titles from Latin American countries to try to sate the thirst of Spanish readers in the US runs into problems of binding quality. Book binding requires the perfect balance of strong, flexible, and quick-drying adhesive, which can be lost if the countries that manufacture glue and adhesives sell a cheaper formula to other countries, or if the higher acidity of the paper or ink seepage interacts with the glue in an undesirable way.
Often when a publisher or distributor manages to brave the journey to the US market, they come with sparse or no metadata in English, especially if their country is not widely fluent in English. This would create no problem if the end-user were browsing titles in a market, but having English-speaking librarians purchasing titles from a vendor’s catalog in a language they don’t speak from a publisher they may never have heard of is daunting. Even figuring out if a title is authentic or translated, or if it is from Spain or Guatemala, currently proves difficult because although a field exists to specify these things, almost no one in the publishing industry uses it.
In addition, some regions of the world are cautious about granting rights to sell titles into other markets because they distrust copyright protections, especially if copyright and trademark protections are not strong in their region. The cultural and governmental barriers require strong relationships to overcome, and that takes years of work.
Ingram Library Services (ILS) works with more than 19,000 publishers and has the largest active catalog in the world.
Our librarians meet with publishers every week, and we talk about the need for authentic world languages and better metadata. Our publisher partners send spreadsheets and Edelweiss collections to us and present their Spanish-language titles to us seasonally. We are working closely with them to ensure that we are getting the best authentic and translated titles into our curated lists and our database for future services, and we are researching the best ways to ingest the fields that identify original language and country of origin.
In addition, our sister companies, Ingram Publisher Services (IPS) and/or Lightning Source (LS), have partnered with Grupo Planeta, a leader in the publishing market of Spain and Latin America, as well as PRH India, Reverte Management International, Hemeria, Montena, Hachette Livre, Arab Scientific Publishers, and more to bring good content into the US market.
The ILS Collection Development librarians are working to curate good Spanish-language titles. Under Curated Lists>High Interest Category Lists>Browse the Lists, each age range contains a Spanish Language Books category with several lists, including new and forthcoming lists, essentials lists, subject-specific lists, and lists in various formats. These lists contain both originals and translations, but as we get more content and metadata, we will work to curate more authentic Spanish lists.
For other languages, the ipage Power Searching and filters help refine search results to a specific language or publisher. Power Search has a Language field populated with every language available in ipage. In any search result view, if more than one language is returned, a Language filter will appear in the left filter bar. You can either click on the desired hyperlink or click “More” and select to include or exclude one or more languages. The languages in that filter reflect the languages available in that particular list or search result. For a more broad and quicker search, switching the Quick Search bar to Keyword, typing in the language, and clicking on the desired language in the filter will help show everything in that language. Sorting by Ingram Demand helps bring the most popular titles to the top.
For those who want lists pushed to them, such as in a Standing Order Program, Ingram offers the iSelect® Program. This automated program runs on publisher metadata, so titles will need to be examined to ensure they fit into the parameters—I recommend looking at cover images to ensure they are indeed in that language. Libraries can choose certain subjects and limit by Spanish or by all languages except English and Spanish. The program can also be limited by specific publishers. When a title meeting the pre-selected parameters enters Ingram’s ipage catalog or gets a “buy” placed on it by Ingram’s professional buyers, it will appear on a list two Sundays later.
We plan on building a more robust Spanish language program by researching and finding publishers of authentic content and connecting them with our Lightning Source team to offer solutions for distribution in the US, along with helping publishers identify authentic titles. We would then be able to offer more lists and hand-curated standing order programs to help libraries find the titles that will speak most to their communities. We are currently searching for a passionate, independent collection development librarian fluent in Spanish to join our team of librarians in Nashville to help find publishers of great authentic Spanish-language (especially Latin American) books, to maintain assigned categories in our proprietary database(s), and to create lists for ipage, services, and customized projects.
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Director, Collection & Metadata Development
