Advisory Board
John Ayala is Emeritus Dean of the
Library and Learning Resources at Fullerton Community
College, in California, where he served as Dean of the
Library for sixteen years. Prior to his tenure at
Fullerton, he served as Director of the Pacific
Coast Campus Library at Long Beach City College. In
both director posts, Ayala was instrumental in creating
library-learning resource facilities. During his
eighteen years at Long Beach City College, he served
as president of the Academic Senate. Currently, he is
Interim Director of Library-Learning Resources for
Compton Community College. He is a founding member
and past president of REFORMA.
Holly Ackerman is the Librarian for Latin America and
Iberia at Duke University. Her research on the Cuban diaspora
includes The Cuban Balseros: Voyage of Uncertainty, on the
1994 raft crisis. She has also published works on Cuba's
political prisoners, Cuban national reconciliation, and
various topics related to post-1980 Cuban migration. Her work
has appeared in Cuban Studies; Encuentro de la cultura cubana;
Latino Studies and other journals. She has produced two
digital archives, one on moderate Cuban politics at
scholar.library.miami.edu/cubamoderada/cubamoderada.html
and another on the Cuban rafter crisis at balseros.miami.edu.
Dr. Ackerman serves as the country specialist on Cuba for
Amnesty International in the United States.
Maria Chavez-Hernandez is an Associate in
Information Studies and Director of the Internship
Program at Florida State University’s College of
Information, where she oversees recruitment, alumni
affairs, and placement activities. Dr. Chavez-Hernandez
has conducted research on the use of Spanish-language
subject headings and their potential impact on information
access. She has provided training seminars in Central
America and the Caribbean and earned an Outstanding
International Volunteer Award for her work in the area
of information studies in the Dominican Republic. Her
teaching and research interests include management of
information resources, resource sharing, document
delivery, and international information services.
Irma Flores-Manges is a Managing Librarian at the
Hampton Branch at Oak Hill for the Austin Public Library where
she also served as the Youth Services Manager. She received
her MLS from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a
member of Texas Library Association, American Library Association,
REFORMA, AILA, and a Board Member of the Writer's League of
Texas. She is on the Regional Committee for the
Tomas Rivera Award.
Loida A. Garcia-Febo specializes in services to multicultural
and multilingual populations focusing on Latinos and
Spanish speakers. For the past six years she has worked at
Queens Library in New York. Her published articles focus on
Latino immigration and equity of access to information by
immigrants. Garcia-Febo is currently a member of the Executive
Board of REFORMA, a member of ALA’s International Relations
Committee and the Intellectual Freedom Round Table, a member
of IFLA’s Free Access to Information and Freedom of
Expression Committee and the New Professional Discussion
Group, and a member of ACURIL. She holds a MLS from the
University of Puerto Rico.
Nelly S. González has served as Head
Librarian for the Latin American and Caribbean Library
of the University of Illinois since 1985 and is the
current editor of Bolivian Studies Journal. She has
published many articles in the proceedings of the
Seminar in the Acquisition of Latin American Library
Materials (SALALM) and scholarly journals. She is
recipient of SALALM’s José Toríbio Medina Award
for her bibliography of the works on Gabriel García
Márquez. Currently, she is working to make the García
Márquez bibliography available online and collaborating
on a bibliographic electronic database of the Black
Caribbean. She is a past president of SALALM.
Claudia Hill is Product Manager for
Web and Database Applications, Administrative Computing,
Harvard University. She has co-written an upcoming article
for Cataloging & Classification Quarterly on the importance
of Spanish-language terms in English-language bibliographic
records. Formerly the art and architecture Cataloger for
Columbia University’s Avery Library, she also served as
Editor of conservation and preservation terminology at
the J. Paul Getty Trust's Art & Architecture Thesaurus.
Pamela Mann is the Librarian for U.S.
Latino Studies and the Caribbean at the Benson Latin
American Collection at the University of Texas. Her
areas of interest include U.S. Latino Studies and
Women and Gender Studies. She has served on the Women's
Studies Section committee for Association of College
and Research Libraries and is a member of SALALM
(Seminar for the Acquisition of Latin American Library Material).
Martha E. Mantilla is Acting Librarian
for Latin American Studies and Related Faculty of the
Center for Latin American Studies at the University of
Pittsburgh. She is a member of the Electronic Resources
Subcommittee in the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin
American Library Materials (SALALM) and an Advisory Board
member of the Gamma Idear Foundation, an NGO based in
Colombia working on non-violence, conflict resolution,
and education for peace. She is also producer and host
of the "Latin American Radio Magazine," a weekly radio
program broadcast in Spanish on WRCT 88.3, Pittsburgh.
She received her doctorate degree in Comparative and
Administrative Studies in Education and her Masters
degree in Library Science from the University of Pittsburgh.
Rachel Sandoval is a Librarian at West
Valley Community College. She received a BA in
Anthropology from the University of California, Riverside,
a Master of Arts degree in Latin American Studies from
Stanford University, and a Master's degree in Library
Science from Simmons College.
Ninfa Almance Trejo is Library Director
of the Northwest Campus Library at Pima Community College.
She previously worked as Social Science Librarian at the
University of Arizona, and at the Santa Ana Public Library
and the San Diego Public Library. A longstanding member of
REFORMA, she has served as President of the Orange County
Chapter and Chair of the Scholarship Committee. She has
chaired the Trejo Foster Foundation for Hispanic Library
Education since 2003. She has published several articles
discussing how immigration legislation affects library
services, and the recruitment and retention of minority
librarians in academia.
D.H. Figueredo has written several texts on
Latino and Latin American history and culture, including
The Encyclopedia of Cuba, The Encyclopedia of Caribbean
Literature, and Latino Chronology, all now part of The
American Mosaic database. His children’s books also explore
the Latino experience, beginning his debut picture book,
When This World Was New (Lee and Low, 1999), about the
first time a young boy and his father walk in the snow.
His short story, “That October,” about a baseball game
in Cuba during the Missile Crisis of 1962, has appeared
in several anthologies and will be distributed to American
schools in foreign countries by the State Department.
A Latin American bibliographer and curator at the New York
Public Library, Figueredo is currently director of Bloomfield
College Library and Media Center. He has also been a visiting
scholar at Montclair State University, where he taught world
literature. In 2005, he received the University of St. Martin
Presidential Medal for his contributions to the promotion of
Caribbean literature.