Whether you are trying to learn a new language for fun, preparing for a trip abroad or even for a permanent move to a different country, or you are simply curious about other cultures, the library has many resources to offer beyond traditional phrasebooks and travel guides. Sure, they will teach you the basic words and sentences you need to get by, fun facts about monuments and cities, or useful tips about the country’s customs. There are many other ways to discover and get exposed to a specific culture. You could browse compelling travel books in which authors give their perspective and share anecdotes (such as Anthony Bourdain’s Irreverent Guide) or explore unconventional ways to travel (for instance with this Practical Guide to Astrotourism which focuses on stargazing destinations, or this Diver’s Guide to the World that explores travel destinations above and below water).

But nothing beats consuming content produced by the culture itself, fiction or non-fiction, if possible, in the language you are interested in (like the hundreds of books you can find in the Community Languages collection, available in languages spoken at home in the Eau Claire area other than English). Books, films, and music are powerful and meaningful tools to immerse yourself in another culture. They are the perfect vehicles to deeply experience whole new worlds outside your own and explore places and stories told by foreign creators. Because it is authentic content that wasn’t produced with tourists in mind, they offer a powerful and efficient window on a culture’s way of life, values, norms, behaviors, traditions, and to a wide range of native speakers, slang, accents, dialects, and voices, without any filters.

Take it from my experience. As a French native who moved to the United States as a student, adapting to a new environment was hard, talking to people in a language that I had studied in school but did not master in the least was scary, and navigating a culture full of foreign references, customs and jokes was challenging. What truly helped me were all the films, books, music (and yes, I confess, social media and YouTube videos as well) produced in the U.S. that I had been consuming since I was a child (Americanization of the world oblige…). By soaking in all these substrate elements, most of the time subconsciously, I learned a wealth of non-linguistic and cultural information. You can learn so much about a culture from the content it produces, even for entertainment purposes, beyond language. Learning the codes, traditions, appropriate and expected behaviors that I would need to thrive in my new country, made my integration and my interactions easier and (hopefully) more culturally appropriate.

But why does this matter? In Reference Services at the library, an important aspect of the job is to demonstrate cultural awareness, or the understanding of cultural, generational, and other differences, in our communication styles with the public, because they may have different meanings in different contexts. I believe that we should all strive to increase our cultural humility and competence, which has become a necessity to evolve in our globalized world. Since the rise of the Internet, digital content, and streaming platforms, we are more than ever exposed to foreign content.

Most American viewers seem to embrace subtitles, and give a chance to international productions (like the South Korean thriller Parasite which is one of the highest-grossing foreign-language films in the U.S. and started a streak of Academy Awards nominations for many others, like Anatomy of a Fall). It is easier than ever to have access to foreign content. You can watch a Danish series (e.g. Borgen), borrow a Malian film (e.g. Yeelen), listen to a CD in Somali (e.g. Iftin Band’s Mogadishu’s finest), or read a book in Ojibwa from your local library. It has also never been easier to learn a new language (through the hundreds of online language learning apps, such as the one offered by the Eau Claire library: Transparent Language). How cool is that?

Books, films, and music (and therefore your library!) offer a plethora of opportunities to expand your horizons and discover aspects of cultures you would have never thought existed. They allow you to feel more connected to people in other parts of the world, to immerse yourself in another culture and to gain perspective on your own. Being enthusiastic about languages and cultures and seeking ‘foreign’ content has made me a better human being and a better citizen. So, go check out all the foreign movies (you can find them easily with their red sticker that says “foreign movies”), foreign CDs, community language books, and translated books that the Eau Claire library has to offer. Or check out these lists: