French Materials in the DC Area Libraries Gaining more Visibility for the Alliance Française Library. Research Begins by Nadia Gabriel

Transcription

1 French Materials in the DC Area Libraries Gaining more Visibility for the Alliance Française Library Research Begins by Nadia Gabriel

2 Alliance Française is a non-profit language and cultural center located downtown DC. Our main activities are teaching French and organizing cultural events such as lectures, movie screenings, tastings, and exhibits. We also have a small developing library of roughly 9,000 print and audiovisual items that serves our students and a wider francophone public from France, the US, and all over the world. Collections aim to respond to entertainment and language learning purposes, as well as basic research needs. Anybody can borrow from the library as long as they are members of AF. The library is open 45 hours a week. My project and my research aim at promoting our unique collection of French materials to the DC area community. For the first time in the library's history, I would like to make our collection a part of the impressive network of public, school, and special libraries we are lucky to have here in DC. The first step in this process is to understand what French-language materials currently exist in the libraries of the greater DC area. Therefore, my research includes determining: - What non-english collections in general, French collections in particular, exist in the libraries that are open to all (fee-based or not). - Within these libraries, how to map collections of French items specifically. There is room for exchange with my colleague selectors of French materials. I believe that both the librarian community and our users would benefit from it.

3 What makes our collections unique, 1/2 Children materials ~100 audiobooks and music CDs ~210 DVDs & VHS ~320 comic books ~1200 fiction and non fiction books + 3 magazines

4 What makes our collections unique, 2/2 ~210 graphic novels ~590 music CDs ~60 audiobooks ~950 DVDS & VHS Adult materials ~3200 fiction books ~1400 non fiction books + 19 magazines ~600 language learning items

5 A successful library, 1/ Borrowers per year at AF Library New borrowers* Total borrowers * Not incremental: borrowers in one year are not necessarily borrowers the next year

6 A successful library, 2/2 Number of items borrowed per year at AF Library Significant increase attributed to changes in borrowing policies and outreach operations at AF Average number of items per person borrowed per year: 2005 ~ ~ ~ ~

7

8 Statistics reported by these libraries In DC DCPL ~5,000 items in French In MD In VA Frederick County libraries Prince George County libraries Montgomery County libraries Enoch Pratt, Baltimore Anne Arundel County libraries Howard County libraries Takoma Park library Prince William County Alexandria library Loudoun County library Falls Church Mary Riley Styles Arlington Virginia Library ~50 books; a few DVDs ~300 books for adults and children (mostly fiction); language learning sets; DVDs About 7,000 books; a few magazines Several hundred classic titles; a few children books; a few movies Language learning sets 169 books; 51 children books; 2 language learning sets ~100 adult books; ~200 children books; a few magazines 92 children and adult books ~170 books no items in French (foreign collections are Spanish) 3 magazines; 96 DVDs ~600 books; 4 magazines; 107 movies; language learning sets

9 Uniqueness of AF s French language collections AF s French holdings (kids + adults) DC area libraries holdings reported numbers AF s collections relative to other libraries* Audiobooks and music CDs Unique DVDs & VHS Print books Graphic novels Magazines Language learning material 1400 < 10! 100 x larger x larger 640 Unique x larger 430 <6 100 x larger * DCPL is not included because I have yet to break down their holdings of 5000 French language material by format.! except for Falls Church lib which has ~100 ^ except for Montgomery Co which has ~7K print books Future research will explore these differences into more details, e.g., children materials vs. adults, fiction vs. non fiction, French electronic resources in other libraries. I will study school and universities holdings in the DC area as well.

10 Further study will explore to what extent Montgomery County Libraries and DCPL have similar collections to Alliance Française, and if/how we could work together. Also, more research needs to be done on collection development policies (e.g. French vs. other languages) and demographics (e.g. people speaking French at home; international/immersion schools) to explain the differences in numbers from one library to the other. Sneak preview: According to the US Census Bureau ( American Community Survey, 3-year estimate, 2008 data: 9,188 people over 5 year old speak French at home in the District of Columbia. 40,862 people over 5 year old speak French at home in Virginia, including 2,387 in Prince William County and 1,684 in Loudoun County 58,842 people over 5 year old speak French at home in Maryland, including 13,949 in Prince George s County and 24,507 in Montgomery County Area size and total population per county need to be taken into account, but these statistics are a partial explanation to the numbers mentioned above. to be continued.