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PROPOSED REFERENCE SCHEDULE FOR INTERACTIVE SHIFT ALLOTMENTS

READINGS ON ADULT LITERACY INSTRUCTION

I am enrolled in Ping Li's Adult Literacy class at Queens College this semester and we have hit the ground running in terms of talking about Adult Literacy Instruction. Through reading Hinchliffe's article, "Examining the Context: New Voices Reflect on Information Literacy" in Reference User Service's, I came across an even more important report: Presidential Committee on Information Literacy. This report was released on January 10, 1989, so to say it is outdated is putting it mildly. However, the report makes some amazing points and led me to a fuller understanding of what is mean by Adult Literacy Instruction.
To start, a person would need to define what it means to be information literate. The report says that to be information literate, "a person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information" (1989, par. 3) However succinct this definition proves, it might be even more instructive if we look at the connotations of what it means to be information literate. The underscoring idea concerning information literacy has to be that the person that is information literate is a lifelong learner, or a person who is eminently interested in learning how it is they learn and replicating the results every time there is something they don't know.
It is obvious that learning how you learn is going to be an effective mental talisman against people who are trying to take advantage of you, however, as the report states the people who most need to be information literate are not and therein lies the crux of the problem. "Minority and at-risk students, illiterate adults, people with English as a second language, and economically disadvantaged people are among those most likely to lack access to the information that can improve their situation" (1989, par. 10)
Most troubling, though, I would have to say is the complete obfuscation of the importance that libraries play in the lives of people. Time after time, the importance of libraries is left out of reports and the impact that libraries have in people's lives is ignored. This is a shame because libraries in conjunction with schools are the first places that literacy skills are first internalized and digested. To assume that it is merely schools that are instructing our children is not only myopic but petty; the reality is that young people are learning just as much from their experiences in libraries as their experiences in normative schools.

PROPOSED PERIODICAL FORM REFERENCES LIST FOR THESIS ON LATINO POESIS/POETRY

Callahan, L. (Sep., 2001). Metalinguistic references in a Spanish/English corpus. Hispania, 84.3, Retrieved January, 22, 2009, from http://www.jstor/stable/3657776

Colon, D. (Winter, 2001). Other latino poetic method. Cultural Critique, 47, Retrieved January, 22, 2009, from http://www.jstor/stable/1354586.

Damon, M. (Autumn 1998). Avant-Garde or borderguard: (Latino) identity in poetry. American Literary History, 10.3, Retrieved 1/8/09, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/490107.

de la Campa, R. (Autumn, 2001). Latin, latino, american: Split states and global imaginaries. Comparative Literature, 53.4, Retrieved January, 22, 2009, from http://www.jstor/stable/3593525

Flores, J., & Yudice, G. (1990). Living borders/buscando america: Languages of latino self-formation. Social Text, 24, Retrieved January 22, 2009, from http://www.jstor/stable/827827.

Mendieta-Lombardo, E., & Cintron, Z. (September, 1995). Marked and unmarked choices of code switching in bilingual poetry. Hispania, 78.3, Retrieved January 22, 2009, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/345306.

Rodriguez y Gibson, E. (Spring 2008). Tat your black holes into paradise: Lorna Dee Cervantes and a poetics of loss. MELUS, 33.1, Retrieved 1/8/09, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/435976.

Torres, L. (Spring 2007). In the contact zone: Code-switching strategies by Latino/a writers. MELUS, 32.1, Retrieved 1/8/09, from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/printdoc.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort.

LATINO POETRY: ABSTRACT

It is incumbent upon libraries, both academic and public, to build, possess, and cultivate their collections of Latino Poetry for a variety of reasons.

For starters, Latinos are poised to become the largest minority in the U.S.; in fact, "the U.S. Census Bureau claims that by the year 2050, a full quarter of the U.S. population will be of Latino origin; that is, nearly 100 million people will be able to trace their ancestry to the Spanish-speaking, Latin American, and Caribbean worlds" (Suarez-Orozco & Paez, 2002, pg. 2). It might become increasingly difficult for Libraries to say there is little interest in Latino Poetry when one in four Americans is Latino themselves.

Latino Poetry extensively uses code switching between Spanish and English to convey meaning, significance, and political affinities. There are myriad reasons why Latino Poets would choose to include Spanish in their English poems, and vice versa; however, this convention is mostly utilized by Latino Poets to emphasize the duality of their Latino identity. Latinos are neither here nor there; they are an ethnic label that is in the process of defining itself and bridging binary racial boundaries imposed by the U.S. culture. Because the parameters of what a Latino actually is are constantly changing, Latino Poetry is constantly evolving to accommodate its taxonomists.

Additionally, Latinos retain their use of Spanish more than any other ethnic group. This means that as a whole, Latinos deploy Spanish more than other ethnic groups. And because Latino Poetry has high incidences of Spanish intermingled with the English text, the language serves not just as "literature" but as a conduit and enhancer of Latino culture. For example, "Latino families are distinct in their extensive use of Spanish at home. Recent data show that in their homes, about 83 percent of immigrant Latino youth use their native language primarily or exclusively" (Suarez-Orozco & Paez, 2002, pg. 8). More importantly, "Even third generation bilingualism is relatively higher among Latinos than among other ethnic groups" (Suarez-Orozco & Paez, 2002, pg. 8).