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rfmcdonaldThursday morning, as part of the on-going renovations at the Confederation Centre Public Library, we moved the multilingual collection down to the main floor. The multilingual collection is composed of those books which were written in neither French nor English: Chinese, Japanese, German, Spanish, Dutch, and so on. The books were taken down from the East Mezzanine in armloads and given to me to organize.
All of the books in the collection--so far as I know--have been kept. The large majority of the books, though, have not been taken down to the floor, along with the one bay of German-language books and one bay of Greek-language books kept in the dark dusty basement left to languish years ago. The size of the collection has been sharply reduced--just three shelves of Chinese (two fiction and one non-fiction), just four shelves of Dutch (three fiction and one non-fiction), two shelves each of German and Spanish (one fiction and one non-fiction), and nine shelves of Japanese. The rest, so far as potential users are concerned, is unavailable and quite possibly unknown.
The truly depressing thing about this is that there isn't any need for a larger collection. The Island's Dutch-speaking population, for instance, is largely descended from the wave of immigrants who left the Netherlands in the decade of the Second World War as part of a government-sponsored emigration program; these immigrants have assimilated quite readily, and practically the only vestiges of this community is a dairy farm north of Charlottetown specializing in gouda cheese, some non-Franco-British family names, and a minor controversy over the use of the Dutch flag as a sign to tourists of goods for sale. Chinese and Hispanic immigration is non-existent, while the German presence on the Island is far more marginal than the Dutch. There is a reasonably large Lebanese community on the Island--our late Premier
All of the books in the collection--so far as I know--have been kept. The large majority of the books, though, have not been taken down to the floor, along with the one bay of German-language books and one bay of Greek-language books kept in the dark dusty basement left to languish years ago. The size of the collection has been sharply reduced--just three shelves of Chinese (two fiction and one non-fiction), just four shelves of Dutch (three fiction and one non-fiction), two shelves each of German and Spanish (one fiction and one non-fiction), and nine shelves of Japanese. The rest, so far as potential users are concerned, is unavailable and quite possibly unknown.
The truly depressing thing about this is that there isn't any need for a larger collection. The Island's Dutch-speaking population, for instance, is largely descended from the wave of immigrants who left the Netherlands in the decade of the Second World War as part of a government-sponsored emigration program; these immigrants have assimilated quite readily, and practically the only vestiges of this community is a dairy farm north of Charlottetown specializing in gouda cheese, some non-Franco-British family names, and a minor controversy over the use of the Dutch flag as a sign to tourists of goods for sale. Chinese and Hispanic immigration is non-existent, while the German presence on the Island is far more marginal than the Dutch. There is a reasonably large Lebanese community on the Island--our late Premier
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Thursday morning, as part of the on-going renovations at the <a href="http://www.confederationcentre.com">Confederation Centre</a> <a href="http://www.library.pe.ca">Public Library</a>, we moved the multilingual collection down to the main floor. The multilingual collection is composed of those books which were written in neither French nor English: Chinese, Japanese, German, Spanish, Dutch, and so on. The books were taken down from the East Mezzanine in armloads and given to me to organize.
All of the books in the collection--so far as I know--have been kept. The large majority of the books, though, have not been taken down to the floor, along with the one bay of German-language books and one bay of Greek-language books kept in the dark dusty basement left to languish years ago. The size of the collection has been sharply reduced--just three shelves of Chinese (two fiction and one non-fiction), just four shelves of Dutch (three fiction and one non-fiction), two shelves each of German and Spanish (one fiction and one non-fiction), and nine shelves of Japanese. The rest, so far as potential users are concerned, is unavailable and quite possibly unknown.
The truly depressing thing about this is that there isn't any need for a larger collection. The Island's Dutch-speaking population, for instance, is largely descended from the wave of immigrants who left the Netherlands in the decade of the Second World War as part of a government-sponsored emigration program; these immigrants have assimilated quite readily, and practically the only vestiges of this community is a dairy farm north of Charlottetown specializing in <a href="http://www.destination-pei.com/common/property.asp?DirectoryID=1266">gouda cheese</a>, some non-Franco-British family names, and a minor controversy over the use of the Dutch flag as a sign to tourists of goods for sale. Chinese and Hispanic immigration is non-existent, while the German presence on the Island is far more marginal than the Dutch. There is a reasonably large Lebanese community on the Island--our late Premier <a href"http://www.canoe.ca/NewsArchiveNov96/candigest_nov13.html">Joseph Ghiz</a> was of Lebanese descent--but the Arabic-language collection is limited to a dozen children's books. The Japanese community is the only prominent and growing non-Canadian immigrant community on the Island, but its prospects for growth are somewhat limited.
Naturally enough, the effective monoculturalism of the Island is reflected in the restaurant world. I remember rdi's face when I told him, at <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/rfmcdpei/241170.html#cutid2">Hey Lucy!</a> in Toronto this April, that Charlottetown got its first Indian restaurant this year. We've had Chinese and Lebanese places for a generation, there's an Italian restaurant (for "fine dining") on Water Street, but that's really all I can think of. Can any Islanders add other cuisines/restaurants to the list?
All of the books in the collection--so far as I know--have been kept. The large majority of the books, though, have not been taken down to the floor, along with the one bay of German-language books and one bay of Greek-language books kept in the dark dusty basement left to languish years ago. The size of the collection has been sharply reduced--just three shelves of Chinese (two fiction and one non-fiction), just four shelves of Dutch (three fiction and one non-fiction), two shelves each of German and Spanish (one fiction and one non-fiction), and nine shelves of Japanese. The rest, so far as potential users are concerned, is unavailable and quite possibly unknown.
The truly depressing thing about this is that there isn't any need for a larger collection. The Island's Dutch-speaking population, for instance, is largely descended from the wave of immigrants who left the Netherlands in the decade of the Second World War as part of a government-sponsored emigration program; these immigrants have assimilated quite readily, and practically the only vestiges of this community is a dairy farm north of Charlottetown specializing in <a href="http://www.destination-pei.com/common/property.asp?DirectoryID=1266">gouda cheese</a>, some non-Franco-British family names, and a minor controversy over the use of the Dutch flag as a sign to tourists of goods for sale. Chinese and Hispanic immigration is non-existent, while the German presence on the Island is far more marginal than the Dutch. There is a reasonably large Lebanese community on the Island--our late Premier <a href"http://www.canoe.ca/NewsArchiveNov96/candigest_nov13.html">Joseph Ghiz</a> was of Lebanese descent--but the Arabic-language collection is limited to a dozen children's books. The Japanese community is the only prominent and growing non-Canadian immigrant community on the Island, but its prospects for growth are somewhat limited.
Naturally enough, the effective monoculturalism of the Island is reflected in the restaurant world. I remember rdi's face when I told him, at <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/rfmcdpei/241170.html#cutid2">Hey Lucy!</a> in Toronto this April, that Charlottetown got its first Indian restaurant this year. We've had Chinese and Lebanese places for a generation, there's an Italian restaurant (for "fine dining") on Water Street, but that's really all I can think of. Can any Islanders add other cuisines/restaurants to the list?
