The favorite saying of Reynaldo Aguirre, senior bibliographer in the Hispanic Division, is, "I hate messes."
This prompted him in 1989 to take inventory and organize the pamphlet collections in the Hispanic Division.
In early 1991, Eric Wayne was hired to catalog the collection of 190 boxes containing 14,250 pamphlets. These materials, ranging from agriculture to zoology, consist mostly of political and historical pamphlets from the 1830s to the early 1940s. The project is nearing completion. Ninety-five percent of the pamphlets have received collection-level cataloging and 298 on- line MARC records were created.
The Hispanic Division's displays of Hispanic or Portuguese culture are usually also the work of Mr. Aguirre. In 1990 he located Nicaraguan painter Jorge Somarriba -- now living in the Washington area -- who agreed to design a poster to celebrate the 50th anniversay of The Handbook of Latin American Studies. The colorful poster will soon be available in the Madison Building Sales Shop.
Mr. Aguirre was born in Robstown, Texas. He attended schools in San Antonio and is a graduate of St. Mary's University in that city. He came to the Library of Congress in 1974 and worked in the National Union Catalog and in the Loan Division before coming to the Hispanic Division in September 1980.
During his years in Hispanic he also prepared the bibliography Works by Miguel de Cervantes in the Library of Congress, now in press, and has worked with Taylor Publishing Co. negotiating the production a fourth edition of The National Directory of Latin Americanists. Currently he is planning the preservation of the Hispanic Division's ephemera and the move back to the division's original location. In the midst of all these duties, he still finds time to help readers in the Hispanic Reading Room.
