Meeting Asturias’ Librarians, Part 2

In part 2 of an interview, the Asturias Academy’s new librarian, Nicholas Newlin, discusses his experience at the school so far. (Part 1 is here)

What does your typical day look like at the Asturias Library:

I get here in the morning around 8:30 am, and stay until 6 with an hour in between for lunch. It is a longer day than I worked in the States, but I think that is the case for most Guatemalans. Unfortunately, they have to work longer hours but don’t get quite as much for it. When I arrive in the morning I do mostly administrative work and am working on the organization of the library; elementary- and middle-school age children are here, and Dorita works with them on reading, formation of letters and vowel sounds, as well as reads to them as a group. In the afternoon I re-open the library at one. Students come to work on homework assignments or do puzzles, and normally there are classes that come up for periods of “lectura” and can choose a book to read. It is really important that students are given this time among their other studies here at the colegio because even if they’re not reading page after page, they become more familiar with books and a community library environment. Next quarter we are hoping to have a method of testing comprehension and reading speed so that students can improve from quarter to quarter.

What has it been like working with Dorita (Asturias teacher-librarian):

She is really great with the younger students. It has been nice to work with her and nice to know that we’re making an investment in a Guatemalan local who is very interested in childhood education. It is great to see what different perspectives we have on the library and how it can work in the community; we tend to have a more open, disorganized view as North Americans, but here they tend to be pretty strict with students and books have more value than we put on them in the States. The combination of the two perspectives should help to make the library a useful place in the future. When I collaborated with the Library of Congress of Paraguay, this was certainly the case: I brought the theory of libraries in North America but through compromise we arrived at a document/system that would work in practice at their institution.

What have been the biggest challenges so far, or what do you anticipate will be especially challenging?

The most challenging thing so far has been working with students here at the school. For the most part they are really well-behaved and probably unlike many schools here in Guatemala the students are very excited about learning. Apart from behavior in class — mostly talking or disrupting neighbors — I am coming up with ways to encourage good selection of books by students to interest them interested in what books we have. Also, I will give something of an introductory course to libraries and how we organize the place, as well as provide an idea of genres and the course of “literature” through the ages. Working with middle- and high-school kids is really something I didn’t think that I would ever do, but I am happy to have taken the challenge and it should serve me well in the future.

What advice would you give librarians who are interested in pursuing international opportunities?

It seems difficult and there are certainly a lot of things that get in the way of travel: work, family, and the savings that we need to get abroad for a while. But at certain times it is worthwhile to put these things on a backburner and see what is out there, how people live in other cultures and in other places. I think that the number one thing was having fluency in Spanish, that has really opened the most doors for me, both in terms of a homestay and with colleagues at libraries and various institutions. There are lots of courses that you can take at library school, but being on the ground is priceless, and you really get to see the role of libraries and what might work to get more people reading.