In 2018 and 2020, librarian Jade Madrid received “Emerging Disciplines” internal grants from Lauinger Library to build a collection of books in Afro-Latinx Studies. Financial support for Jade’s initiative came from the Library’s Gladys Brooks Emerging Disciplines Fund, which was created by a 2013 grant from the Gladys Brooks Foundation. Here is an interview with Jade about the process:
Why did you apply?
We are lucky at Lauinger to already have great working relationships with booksellers across Latin America. Through these connections, I receive a lot of information about the books being published, and am able to hand-pick titles for the library’s collections. It’s one of my favorite parts of my job. I know that having books published in the region is essential to our students and faculty. It’s hard to imagine a world-class Latin American Studies program like we have at Georgetown without access to scholarly output published outside of the United States. Additionally, many of these titles are not available as e-books, so it’s extra important to be able to purchase the physical copies and have them shipped here, cataloged, and made available to the community.
My ongoing work with faculty and students showed me that I should take a look at our collections and see if I could be buying more in these areas. There has also been a noteworthy increase of scholarly work around Afro-Latin America in the last couple of decades. Those two things in conjunction made it clear that Afro-Latin America deserved extra attention in our collections. The Gladys Brooks Funds was a great opportunity to request extra funds.
In addition to aligning our collections to student and faculty research interests (and keeping abreast of scholarly output), I see this commitment to featuring Afro-Latinx voices as a commitment to collecting diverse library materials that increases resources produced by scholars from Black and marginalized communities, which was included in the Library’s Statement on Racial Justice.
How did you identify titles?
That’s the fun part! Once I got the grant I reached out to graduate students and faculty to receive suggestions. Their requests included DVDs and books published throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, and Spain. I learned a lot along the way, and had fun tracking down titles. Sometimes a certain book may be out of print or unavailable, but in general I was able to find the titles that were requested.
I also worked with booksellers one-on-one to examine very recent scholarly output, especially materials published in Colombia, Brazil, the Caribbean, and Spain.
How can I find the books you bought?
When recently putting together the Afro-Latinx Book display, I was thrilled to see so many titles that I purchased have now been cataloged and are available. You can visit the display in the main entrance of the library during November. You can also check out the Latin American Studies Research Guide. Questions? Schedule an appointment with Latin American Studies librarian Jade Madrid today.
What’s next?
The Library awards internal grants from the Gladys Brooks fund every year to allow librarians to buy materials in emerging disciplines. I’d love to apply for the grant again to buy Lusophone African publications. Stay tuned!