Long Beach librarians add 1,400 Khmer titles during Cambodia trip

By Greg Mellen 
Press-Telegraph Staff Writer

Posted:   10/30/2012

LONG BEACH - The fit is a little tighter in head librarian Sue Taylor's office at the Mark Twain branch library.
"I'm looking at 22 boxes," Taylor said of the treasure trove of volumes now at the library.
Taylor and Glenda Williams recently returned from Cambodia, where they went on a shopping spree, backed by grants of $11,000, that netted 1,400 volumes and covered the cost of shipping.
In a whirlwind four-day span, Taylor and Williams scoured bookstores, markets, the country's national library, a nonprofit that delivers books to the countryside and the Cambodian documentation center, where records for the ongoing war crimes tribunal are published.
Taylor said it will take three weeks or so before the volumes begin to appear on library shelves. The titles must first be translated and the volumes catalogued, scanned, tagged and have bar-codes affixed.
"I wish I could snap my fingers and it would all be done, but it doesn't work that way," Taylor said.
The new volumes are the first Khmer-language additions to the library's collection since 2008, when Taylor made her last buying trip to Cambodia.

Taylor says she has been unable to find a way to order Khmer books online, necessitating the trip.
"We had a lot of luck," Taylor said of the excursion and the books found. "Everything went perfect."
Taylor said she and Williams were able to find books on everything from idioms, to medicine, to math and grammar.

They even found a translated version of the second book in the Harry Potter series. The library already has the first book.

Taylor also was happy that the library was able to diversify its catalogue.

"The field is widening and it's not just Pol Pot," Taylor said, referring to the late leader of the Khmer Rouge under whose regime upwards of 2 million Cambodians died.

One place the two librarians visited was the country's national library, which Taylor said had a scant 20,000 volumes.

By contrast, the Long Beach Public library has more than 2million volumes overall, and now 3,600 in Khmer.

Asked if she had any souvenirs from the trip, Taylor said she now has privileges at the Cambodian national library with her own Cambodian library card.

Greg.mellen@presstelegram.com, 562-714-2093, twitter: @gregmellen