Interview with Rósa Björg Jónsdóttir, Project Manager of Móðurmál Library who received the Order of the Falcon from the President of Iceland Guðni Th. Jóhanesson for her contribution to promoting literature in other languages than Icelandic. The order is awarded annually on 17 June, the national holiday.
Renata: Congratulations Rósa Björg with your Order of the Falcon. Could you tell me what kind of Order it is?
Rósa Björg: It is a recognition for my work. You have to be nominated.
Renata: Who receives the Order? I was looking at the list of people who received the order this year, it seems that usually the nominations are for contribution to Icelandic culture or Icelandic language or Icelandic state. When I was looking at the list, I thought that you were actually different from the others, you were promoting other cultures and children´s literature in other languages.
Rósa Björg: Yes. I was also different from others because I received it for a completely voluntary job.
Renata: Could you tell me a bit about the library? What did you actually do that earned you this Order of the Falcon?
Rósa Björg: The library will be five years old in December. From the beginning, I have catalogued the books in the National Library System. Now we are up to 7400 books in 85 languages.
Renata: And you found the office for it, you found the place. Are you lending the books to individuals?
Rósa Björg: We have three kinds of people coming to us. I lend the books to the pupils in Móðurmál, some come directly to me, some groups have boxes with books and they do the lending out, then I do interlibrary loans to schools and public libraries around Iceland, and the third group are people interested in learning languages.
Renata: And you also advertise the library, right, you have presented it at conferences?
Rósa Björg: Yes, I presented it at a conference of librarians. After that I got more requests from outside of Reykjavík. The group of librarians is quite small so now actually I am getting books for the library from my colleagues. For example a few days ago I got a book in French, in Slovenian and in German from another library. We are getting a lot of donations. Mainly we have books, but we also have board games, DVDs, audiobooks, some magazines for kids as well.
Renata: Why is it important, why are you doing it?
Rósa Björg: I started with the Italian library eleven years ago. I kept donating books to Reykjavík public library in Italian, they were the books that my children were not reading any more. They could not find any new books in Italian in the library, and they were losing the joy of reading in Italian. So, a group of Italians living here donated books that their children were not reading any more and we started the library. I think you probably did the same with the Czech library as well.
Renata: It was a little different with the Czech library. We organized collections of books in the Czech Republic and a travel agency brought six big boxes of books to us. People from the Czech community wrote the catalogue cards. And then people kept giving us books and we slowly figured what kind of books are important for children going to the Czech school. Because they need books that are age-appropriate but simple, simpler texts than children in the Czech Republic their age.
Rósa Björg: Exactly. We had books mostly from the community in Iceland, but people also brought books from Italy. Things just kept adding up.
Renata: So tell me, is there more space for new books in the library today?
Rósa Björg: Not so much space but we can make more space if we have to.
Renata: Do you still accept more books?
Rósa Björg: It depends on the languages. Nordic languages for example have their own library in the Nordic house. Also English and German, you can get them in public libraries. I am very selective. I prefer to use the space for languages that are more difficult to get.
Renata: So which languages do you actually want to add, languages that you still don´t have or languages of the minorities that live in Iceland?
Rósa Björg: I am always trying to get books for the minorities in Iceland. I also have languages that are not on Móðurmál´s language map. You never know, I was asked the other day whether we had books in Nepalese. We don´t have any, I had already tried to buy some, but it was very difficult. I would love to have more books in the languages that are not so easy to get, like the Asian ones. Even thought they are difficult to catalogue for me. But I see they are requested. Also Romanian because the Romanian community in Iceland has grown from 150 people a few years ago to 2800 now. So there has been an explosion of requests for Romanian books. I never say no. We try to be environmental; we have many second-hand books. Sometimes when I go abroad, I go to second-hand book stores and buy books in different languages.
Renata: How is the financing of the library?
Rósa Björg: We sometimes get grants that are for specific reasons, for example for buying books. But we don´t have a grant to pay for the work or for the rental space. It was really nice to get the grant from the Developmental Fund of Immigrant Issues because it helped us get books in new languages that I could not get as donations from the communities. And nearly all of the 177 books that I bought have already been borrowed. I think it was money well spent. If it wasn´t for Covid, it could have been even better.
Renata: Ok. So how about some final words. Future.
Rósa Björg: I think we actually need to find a space for the library that is not my office. It would be great to have space where people can sit down, maybe having kids over to read. We teach a lot of languages in Móðurmál, we could have people coming and reading for the kids. Our groups could get together at the library. Now it´s more like a space for keeping the books. But it´s great anyway because before I had to go to different places to pick up the books and I had to go to the schools when they asked for the interlibrary loan. Now I just tell them, please come to me.
Renata: Life became simpler.
Rósa Björg: Yes, but with more people, there is more work. I also had to create more library rules.
Renata: But you think that the library has proved itself, right, its value and its place in the Icelandic society, it was needed, it wasn´t there and you created it, it was missing, right?
Rósa Björg: There was a project some time ago, libraries were meant to take care of one language each, but it wasn´t enough for our children. Now I get donations from those libraries because people are not reading them anymore. It is easier to have them in one place, people know where to find them. But the problem is not having books, I am always receiving more and more books. People are coming and saying, ‘Yeah, I didn´t know about the library, I just heard about it, do you want children´s books in this and this language.’
Renata: Come to think of it, maybe we should think about the minorities, the small groups, the poor groups, the refugee groups, these people have no way of flying back to their country and buying books.
Rósa Björg: We need books in African languages, but they are hard to get.
Renata: Should we also collect links to electronic books?
Rósa Björg: That´s a great idea.
Renata: There are some great collections online and oftentimes they are sorted out by ages and skills, so it could be complementary.
Rósa Björg: Yes, I think so, it would help with the languages that are difficult to get. I also see that the loans in big languages are increasing. Maybe people were shy to visit my basement. Not it is more accessible, more visible. Even if it is open only two hours a week.
Renata: That´s much better than nothing.
Rósa Björg: It´s also flexible, if people can´t come at that time, I always find a time when people can come. People can for example return books to my mailbox.
Renata: That´s great. You are doing an amazing job. It´s so important to offer children access to reading in their languages and provide them with a lot of choices. Thank you for the interview and I hope that the library will grow and receive more support in the future!
Rósa Björg: Thank you.
