Building a Vietnamese Language Collection with the Vietnamese Diaspora Community in the Neighborhood
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Date
2021
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ACRL
Abstract
California State University, Fullerton (CSUF), is a Hispanic-Serving Institution and qualifies to be an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution. The CSUF campus is situated in Orange County, California, with the backdrop of “Little Saigon”—the largest Vietnamese diaspora in the world with a sizable network of Vietnamese American entrepreneurs, community leaders, and students. The university’s geographic proximity to this notable Vietnamese cultural epicenter contributes to a substantial enrollment of Vietnamese heritage students as well as student engagement in Vietnamese course offerings. With a minor in Vietnamese already established several years ago, CSUF has been in the process of developing a Vietnamese degree program, the first of its kind in the United States, that will include a bilingual education certification pathway and extensive training in Vietnamese and Vietnam studies. This book chapter addresses the challenges in growing a language collection at an academic library with a public-facing mission to serve not only the student population but also the local regional community, which in some cases are one and the same. The collections discussions in working directly with one of the communities that is discussed in ethnic studies courses are supplemented by the perspectives of an acquisitions librarian, a teaching faculty member leading the Vietnamese program at CSUF, and a survey of the students enrolled in the Vietnamese courses. These insights will better inform the overall collections strategy necessary to support a new academic program and build a library collection reflective of and responsive to the communities it serves while also enriching our understanding of how to serve a diaspora community through library collections.
Description
Keywords
Vietnamese Language Collections, Library Acquisitions, Collection Development, Diaspora Studies
Citation
Kim, M., & Nguyen, L. “Building a Vietnamese Language Collection with the Vietnamese Diaspora Community in the Neighborhood.” In Ethnic Studies in Academic and Research Libraries, edited by Raymond Pun, Melissa Cardenas-Dow, and Kenya S. Flash. ACRL, 2021.