Welcome, WITty readers! I am Rebecca, and I am very happy to be joining GLLI as a guest curator this August.

A bit about me: I have been a public librarian for 12 years. For the past six years, I have served as the Literature & Language Librarian at Portland Public Library in Portland, Maine, USA. Collection development is one of my largest (and favorite) tasks. Most importantly to this series, I am in charge of building and maintaining the library’s English language fiction collection for adults, as well as our adult world language collection. 

I view collection development as a fun puzzle. We work within the constraints of a budget that is never enough for everything we want to buy. It can be hard to justify purchasing lesser-known translated fiction while popular authors churn out a new book every month. This month, I will offer some suggestions for authors, titles, and niche genres that show popularity and promise for those looking to slowly grow their collections of women in translation.

I keep up with world language fiction using some key resources. Publishers’ Weekly reviews a handful of works in translation in every issue. I also keep The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction by M.A. Orthoffer on hand. It’s an excellent introduction to key authors from each continent. I maintain a list of worldwide literary prizes to help inform my purchasing decisions; the International Booker Prize is an excellent place to start. Finally, I am also lucky to live in a state with a subscription to the database NoveList, which offers a search limiter for the author’s nationality.

Before diving in, I have a disclaimer: I am terrible at acquiring new languages, so I am only reading works translated into English. This means I cannot comment on how the translation interacts with the original text. I hope my perspective and knowledge concerning the management of  a diverse fiction collection is helpful to other library workers in a similar position. 

I’m looking forward to sharing more in the coming weeks!