Kathy Street went to Guadalajara on the behalf of the Oregon Trail Library District.

Street, Oregon Trail Library District director, took the trip with Soraida Lopez, Boardman Public Library assistant, shortly after Thanksgiving.

The International Book Fair, which takes place in Guadalajara, is an opportunity for librarians to expand their selection of Spanish-language literature for their communities.

“I had realized that less than one percent of our entire collection was Spanish material, whereas in our community of Boardman, over 65 percent of our population is Hispanic,” Street said. “So we quickly realized that our books did not reflect our patrons.”

She said the book fair was a great opportunity to procure books that were created by Mexican authors, rather than English books that had been translated into Spanish.

Street said Guadalajara was nice for the weather. It was 80 degrees every day. The most important thing, though, was to purchase books that American libraries wouldn’t normally have access to, she said.

“Mexico has a different model of publishing than we do, so books are released at the book fair, and then any leftovers are shredded in order to get some money back for funding for the next year’s fair,” Street said.

Prior to Street going to the book fair, the library got its books without having to send someone to Guadalajara.

“There’s a group that the Oregon Library Association helped put together that’s called Libros for Oregon, and we originally purchased our first set of Spanish books through them,” Street said.

Besides that, Street said that she has gone almost every year since 2018.

“We didn’t go in 2020 because it was canceled, and then we had to cancel last-minute in 2021,” Street said.

The process for procuring these books is relatively simple, according to Street.

“We work with a vendor who provides an assistant, usually a college student, and we walk around, choose the box we want, and then the vendors will ship the books to our library with an invoice,” Street said.

Among the texts purchased for the library, Street said, were books for children and adults. These books spanned different genres — fiction, non-fiction, beginner’s reading, cooking, and arts and crafts.

“We had a higher request for adult non-fiction books,” Street said.

In addition to books, Street and Lopez also invested in DVDs.

“We went to a DVD store and bought some Mexican shows, movies and documentaries,” Street said. “It was kind of like a Blockbuster there.”

Street said that they had a good time while at the book fair, and it was fun to see all of the librarians from Oregon who also made the journey.

While Street said that she was unsure of the number of books purchased while in Guadalajara, she said that the Oregon Trail Library District brought back $8,000 of books and DVDs for the community.

“We had a lot of fun, it was nice to go and pick out books, to see new books that had been created and the large selection to choose from,” Street said. “It was also nice to see all of the people we worked with for this.”