In what languages does your public library stock books?

[Cavesa]

Ok, putting aside university libraries, private libraries (like those in the Cervantes, Goether, or Institut Francais).
I am as well putting aside the National Library, as I don't know it much. So, the municipal libraries are the subject of this post.

In small towns, the selection is very likely to be much poorer. In Prague:

Vast majority of books is in Czech, of course.
Foreign langauges:
The most books available are in English. Those are even in the small libraries in the individual neighbourhoods.
Quite a lot of books are in German, you can still find a few outside the central library.
Much fewer books (but still enough to last you for some time, if you are not too picky) are in French, Spanish, Russian.
Other languages are much more rare in the libraries, but you can still find some stuff: Polish,Italian, perhaps a few more. I've seen a few (very few) books in other languages, cannot remember which ones.
Slovak is and isn't a foreign language. Sometimes it gets separate shelves, sometimes not. But Slovak books are definitely borrowable, even though often not displayed. Don't forget most Slovak books in the library are likely to be old, as these days, Slovak authors get translated in Czech.

The problem with foreign books is not an overall lack of them, at least unless you want something different from the FIGS+R. The problem is that you cannot be too picky about the genres and authors, and the collections are not being enriched and renewed much. Most people in the public libraries borrow only Czech books. I'd say it is a kind of a circle. The people who would borrow foreign books more have simply gotten used to the municipal library not fulfilling their needs. I don't have a municipal library card anymore, as I can't remember having read any fiction in Czech since 2012.

As far as learning material goes, there is some. You can definitely borrow a useful course, some graded readers (especially for English learners), or a dictionary. But it is impossible to borrow everything you need to get from zero past the intermediate stage, and the selection is mostly limited to the czech publishers. The collection of courses is not being too enriched or renewed, people are supposed to buy all this stuff. Again, it is the circle of library not believing in demand, and interested people not believing in offer. I think it is a huge problem, since the country could definitely do with improvement of the langauge skills and langauge courses are not exactly cheap for lower or middle income families.

In Prague, it is not much of a problem. I will need to renew my library memberships and get a few new ones after my return. But I can use the university libraries (anyone can, it is just not free for people outside the university), I can use libraries specializing in: French, Italian, Spanish, German, (not English, the British Council closed it years ago and gave the content to the Municipal Library), Russian, Polish, Slovak, scandinavian and nordic languages (this one is not run by any official institution but by an organisation of enthusiasts). Recently, I think the Portuguese institut got their own library (they told me they had none a few years ago at the book fair), and there must be at least a few I have no clue about. There is no not-university related library of Asian languages, there is not a Confucius in Prague.

But the smaller towns have it much harder. And since salaries are noticeably smaller outside Prague, it is even more of an disadvantage for the locals.

[smallwhite]

I'm glad you enjoyed that! Unfortunately, you didn't get it. But, yes, close to the city and indeed south of the city. The big clues are Indonesian and maybe French - it's Randwick.

Bankstown has Vietnamese and Arabic books, not just newspapers - a big settlement area for both of those groups.

Randwick has two large branches and at least one smaller one. AND they sell off the books that they take out of circulation very cheaply. I'm working my way through a tween vampire series in Indonesian at the moment and picked up 3 adult books for a dollar this week for when my reading age grows up.

I don't actually know enough about Sydney's demographics yet, or even what municipalities there are I thought Randwick was just a small suburb with the few shops that I see while on the way to Coogee I'll have to go to Randwick and Bankstown next time I do my $2.50 Sunday exploring

[Adrianslont]

I'm glad you enjoyed that! Unfortunately, you didn't get it. But, yes, close to the city and indeed south of the city. The big clues are Indonesian and maybe French - it's Randwick.

Bankstown has Vietnamese and Arabic books, not just newspapers - a big settlement area for both of those groups.

Randwick has two large branches and at least one smaller one. AND they sell off the books that they take out of circulation very cheaply. I'm working my way through a tween vampire series in Indonesian at the moment and picked up 3 adult books for a dollar this week for when my reading age grows up.

I don't actually know enough about Sydney's demographics yet, or even what municipalities there are I thought Randwick was just a small suburb with the few shops that I see while on the way to Coogee I'll have to go to Randwick and Bankstown next time I do my $2.50 Sunday exploring

Yes, Randwick is both suburb and municipality. The main branch of the library is actually in Maroubra. The Randwick branch has a smaller collection but is still a pleasant place and has some Indonesian and Chinese and other languages.

[Jbean]

In Southern California, my library stocks English, Spanish, Chinese, and a smaller number of Vietnamese books. I only read ebooks and haven't been inside the bricks and mortar library for years, but besides the ebooks in those languages I've noticed a handful of books in French, German, and even a couple in Swedish and one in Catalan.

[MCK74]

I usually go to a small library in rural Ohio for my books, and most of my books come through interlibrary loan.

In the library itself I've noticed books and items in the vertical file, as well as documents on taxes, in Spanish.

The interlibrary loan system (for affiliated libraries in Ohio) seems to have some books in most of the major European languages - I've seen books in Spanish, French, German, Italian and Russian as well as Latin, Ancient Greek and Old English.

As far as language learning materials - they seem to have the 90s Teach Yourself courses in almost all the languages they published.

[Serpent]

I have no idea what counts as the main public library in Moscow or in my district. I used to go to the main Foreign Language Library and it has books in loads of languages obviously, but you can't take them home. For Finnish I'm not sure I saw any fiction, mostly language textbooks and publications on linguistics.
I had free Belarusian classes at a library, and there were journalists at the first lesson. They asked for some Belarusian books just for the sake of photos and the library had about a dozen. It's officially the "science library" but they have various regular stuff too it seems.

[jeff_lindqvist]

By the way, even though our library is an integrated public library+university library, the fact that it carries novels in 30+ languages is not a result of the university. It's nearly ten years ago they offered Russian. If you want to study languages, you're in the wrong part of the country.

[MorkTheFiddle]

In listing languages of its holdings, the FAQ for library of my city, Dallas, Texas, does not distinguish between books and other media, and it gives only a "partial" list:

Afrikaans Bulgarian French Hebrew Igbo Punjabi Spanish Urdu
Arabic Chinese German Hindi Italian Polish Swahili Vietnamese
Aramaic Danish Greek Hmong Japanese Portuguese Swedish Wolof
Bambara Dutch Gujarati Icelandic Korean Russian Tamil

I would guess that English and Spanish predominate, but I have checked out novels in French as well.

[Cavesa]

I used to go to the main Foreign Language Library and it has books in loads of languages obviously, but you can't take them home.

This reminds me of the worlds widest network of Swedish libraries- The IKEA

[Xenops]

Believe it or not, my local library is much better than the systems in rural areas:
English books: 85-90%
Spanish books: 5-7%
Other languages:<3%.

We actually have a few books in German, French, Italian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese Russian, Latin, Arabic, and maybe Hindi. In rural areas it's more like this:

English: >99%
Spanish: <1%