Library Board restores money for Spanish fiction (GA)

http://www.ajc.com/gwinnett/content/metro/gwinnett/stories/0629gwxlibrary.html

The Gwinnett County library board restored $3,000 for Spanish-language fiction to the 2007 budget Wednesday, reversing a decision that prompted cries of an anti-Hispanic bias two weeks earlier.

The unanimous vote came at a special meeting called by Chairman Lloyd Breck after the five-member board was bombarded with hundreds of emails. Critics charged the board with using library shelves to send a message about illegal immigration in a county whose Hispanic population has quickly soared to 105,000, the largest in Georgia. The negative reaction spread to other parts of the country as national media outlets such as the Associated Press and MSNBC covered the board's decision.

But member Dale Todd said that's not why the board snipped $3,000 from the $22 million budget. "It was about the money," she said.

The library system, which began offering Spanish-language books in February after an 11-year hiatus, had too many books on CD, Todd said. So Wednesday the board attached a condition that requires the $3,000 to be used only for printed materials, which Todd said are about one tenth the cost of CD sets on average

people are on to them, regardless.

Also in the article:

The board also has abandoned a proposal to remove an option from the library checkout system that allowed patrons to communicate with the computer in Spanish, Breck said. The item was on the board's June 12 meeting agenda but was tabled until July 10. Breck said he doesn't know how the proposal got on the agenda or who requested it.
(snip)

It's wonderful when bigots actually DON'T get their way. That's not usually the case.

Gwinnett was a mostly white, rural county then it became one big, goddamned sbdivison starting back in the 1980s when it was the nation's fastest growing county. Now, many immigrants (all races and countries), Hispancis, blacks and whites live there. Hell, even Ralph Reed and the Runaway Bride and that woman held hostage by the Atlanta courthouse shooter live there.

The fundies recently fired the library director (see the GA forum for more on this) and then they tried to cut the Spanish language materials budget. The director was obviously NOT a fundy or in favor of discrimination or cutting the budget for materials in other languages.