NEW
Library Project
Volume 2, Number 1 - Fall 2003
Making
the Library a Center for Newark Latino Community
Interview
with Ingrid Betancourt
Ingrid Betancourt never set foot in a public
library until she was 20 years old. Raised in Puerto Rico, in a family
that subscribed to magazines and gave books as birthday gifts, she was a
voracious reader, but didn’t use the library because “it was not the
place to go. It was poorly funded. We used our little school library.”
Betancourt said the same is true in many Latin
American countries, where public libraries have skeletal budgets and
limited services. Her job here, as head of multilingual collections and
services at the Newark Public Library, is to help more people, especially
in the Latino community, understand what the library is and does.
People and Stories—Gente y Cuentos perfectly
complements that mission. Twenty years ago, Betancourt was head of
Hispanic services at Newark’s library when People and Stories founder
Sarah Hirschman approached her to talk about the program.
“One of our goals was to do different types of
outreach to the community to raise awareness of what the public library is
in the U.S. and the many services and resources it offers,” Betancourt
said. “Gente y Cuentos reaches out to people who have not been involved
with or close to literature. It fit beautifully with what we were trying
to do.”
Betancourt was especially eager to create
inter-generational groups. She contacted local programs for older Latino
adults and visited high schools to talk about Gente y Cuentos; soon she
was facilitating a group that included seven or eight elders and an equal
number of teens.
“At the beginning, it was a little awkward.
The traditional roles came in; the kids were very respectful and would not
contradict anything the older adults said. The seniors said: ‘This is
the way it is.’ But then we got past that. The texts really helped.”
By the end, she said, the teens—many of whom
had grandparents still living in their native countries—were listening
eagerly to the seniors’ stories and counsel, and several seniors said
they were impressed by the kids’ maturity. “After the session, the
school liked it so much that they continued some sort of relationship with
the senior center.”
Both age groups, she said, enjoyed reading and
discussing stories in their native language. “The older generation was
delighted to reminisce; Spanish is very close to their hearts. They
younger kids spoke English very well, but they were interested and their
families were interested in having them practice their Spanish.”
Betancourt joined the board of People and
Stories—Gente y Cuentos about five years ago. In that time, she has seen
the organization grow and face the questions that inevitably come with
expansion. “We want to bring more people in, involve different types of
communities in a broader way. We’re trying to figure out how that can be
done without losing the essence and quality of the program.”
While she is not currently coordinating Gente y
Cuentos groups, she recalls the experience with a sense of appreciation
and awe. “It’s amazing how this experience takes its own life. You can
prepare the story, but people come together and build something that you
could not have envisioned. Something is created collaboratively.”