World Book and Copyright Day (what a mouthful) is a yearly event to commemorate Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, and the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, all major figures in world writing (and I wonder where the women are…). Legend says that all these great men died on April 23, 1616, although more accurate calculations reveal that Shakespeare’s death date was actually marked on a Julian calendar, and therefore should be May 3^rd on the Gregorian calendar.

In any case, the date was proposed to the UNESCO’s International Union of Editor as a day to promote culture and raise awareness around intellectual property rights. Final approval came on November 15, 1995.

Current festivities include a rotating title of World Book Capital. This began in 2001 with Madrid, last year it was Bogotá, and this year the world’s book capital is Amsterdam, next year it will be Beirut.

Click here for UNESCO’s page on World Book and Copyright Day.

At random, here are a few links to how a handful of libraries around the world are celebrating.

• Bibliotecas Municipales de Málaga, Spain
  
• Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico
• General celebrations in Colombia
• Canada’s Education Ministry

Image info here.

The European Digital Library project has been working since September 2006 on creating a portal to gather digital collection from National Libraries around Europe, including Belgium, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain and Sweden. Europeana, as the site has been named, will be part of the European Library providing access to a multitude of digital objects from across Europe.

Currently Europeana is in beta form, and is being demoed to gather input on how to make if as effective as possible before release. The site aims at offering users the possibility of searching content in a multitude of languages and will allow comparisons of related material across different countries.

Hosting for the site will be done by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands. Europeana aims for a November 2008 release, hosting about 2 million items including book, photographs, maps, audio files, and archival records from libraries, archives, and museums throughout Europe.

You can read the press release for Europeana here. You can view the site demo here.

Image from Europeana.eu

This morning on NPRs Morning Edition I heard a fascinating story about schools in Tucson that are trying to address both the high rates of Latino student dropout from school, and the lack of bilingual interpreters in the city. The school is beginning to harness these children’s language skills by training them to be simultaneous interpreters in the hopes that this will provide the children with enough incentive to stay in school, allow them to have a good job upon graduation and supply enough interpreters to meet the city’s demand.

Some of the children interviewed for the show commented that they have been working as interpreters from a very young age, since many have family members who need help communicating.

How refreshing to see programs encouraging children to be multilingual and multicultural. This type of program is the perfect example of how all of us can greatly benefit by encouraging the assets that each cultural group brings with it. Hopefully this is the beginning of a new trend that helps these students achieve in any field, not just as interpreters.

You can listen to the program here.

A World Digital Library is coming together after an agreement signed yesterday between Abdul Waheed Khan, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Communications and Information, and James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress in the USA’s Library of Congress. The project was started in 2005 by a $3 million grant from Google.

The project aims is to create digital copies of unique material from libraries around the world and make them available over the internet for free. Some of the libraries participating include the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the National Library of Egypt, the National Library of Brazil, the National Library of Russia and the Russian State Library.

The prototype for this digital collection is still being worked on, but it is expected to function in all six official UN languages (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish), and Portuguese.

This project also aims at helping develop the capabilities of developing countries to create and promote digital libraries. This way the collection can reflect more of the world’s culture, and hopefully will help promote cross-cultural learning and understanding, while simultaneously preserving some rare objects from these collections.

You can take a look at the prototype here.

You can read more about this initiative from a UN news release, A 2005 Library of Congress news release, and the Book Standard.

I just found a really interesting article recounting the experiences of two BBC correspondents who spent two weeks traveling the length of the USA speaking only Spanish. The aim of the project was to see what kind of experiences, stories and adventures they would encounter and to get a sense of just how prominent Spanish is in this country, even with all this talk of “English Only.”

To my delight they found Spanish speakers all along, although of course some were more fluent than others. Among the statistics they provide, 15% of people who label themselves “Hispanic” are monolingual English speakers; 25% of are monolingual Spanish speakers; the remaining, and largest portion were bilingual.

Still stereotypes abound. Along their journey they found a man with distinctly Latino name, who spoke no Spanish, and another who after 6 generations in this country, and a college degree is still ostracized and assumed to be an uneducated immigrant.

Just to put things in perspective for all those crying “English Only”; Spanish is the second most common language in the USA after English. The USA has the 5th largest Spanish speaking population in the world; Spanish is the most common language taken in schools as a second language; and besides, this country doesn’t have an official language.

I say whether Spanish is spoken by immigrants or those born and raised here, it benefits us all to know more than one language, and clearly we are going to need it as the Spanish speaking population continues to grow here, and this world continues to come closer together.

You can read the BBC article here, and take a look at the reporter’s blog here. You can also learn more about Spanish in the USA here.

This week I got to visit the Framingham Public Library to see their Newcomer & Neighbors Center. The city has seen a large growth in their immigrant populations, and currently about 20% of the city’s residents are foreign born. Because the local library saw a need in these new communities, and because it wanted to continue its outreach program to the entire community, a Newcomers & Neighbors Center was established. This center is open for a few hours a day, but during these hours it helps people new to the city, the state, or the country in things like finding housing, schools, jobs, health care, and places to meet other people. Part of the programs success has been their ability to find volunteers that come from the same communities they are helping.

While trying to welcome newcomers to the community, the public library currently prints out all of their material in three languages (English, Spanish and Portuguese). Along with the Newcomers & Neighbors Center, the library also has one of the larges literacy centers in the area, and teaches a number of ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classes.

You can read a bit more about Framingham here.

I just read an article about proposed legislation making English the official language in Oklahoma, and how American Indians are opposing this move. American Indians point out that their languages are disappearing fast enough, and that legislation of this type could make matters worse. Proponents to the bill mention the same arguments always used for this type of bill; immigrants to this country must assimilate, and that means learning English, and adapting to the social structure here. I think that in a world that becomes smaller everyday, the USA has an incredible opportunity to its advantage. The world is coming here, why not take advantage of the situation and learn about the world? Today global commerce and education are common practices, more people are traveling than ever before, and situations like Global Warming (or Global Warning as my friend’s mom likes to call it) are forcing us to communicate and engage people all around the globe, this requires fluency in various languages, and cultures. The USA should take advantage of the situation here; immigrants are providing this country with a free education about the world and languages, lets learn from it!