In what languages does your public library stock books?

General discussion about learning languages
User avatar
Bao
Green Belt
Posts: 259
Joined: Sat Nov 28, 2015 6:55 pm
Location: パリ
Languages: German, English
Spanish, French, Japanese
x 420
Contact:

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Postby Bao » Wed Jan 11, 2017 9:31 pm

We have Stadtbibliotheken and Landesbibliotheken. Both are public, but the Landesbibliotheken also are archives for the publications of the last decades.

In my Stadtbibliothek (... three cities) there were novels in English, French, Spanish, a few dozen in Russian and Turkish. Both in the section for adults as well as the section for children. Plus there were picture books in quite a number of languages - several dozen I would think. The selection would vary a bit, one had more audiobooks in English, for example. In general these libraries stock few non-fiction books in foreign languages.

In the SLUB (Sächsische Staats- und Landesbibliothek) they have many more languages present, as the library doubles as a university library so they have material for the language degrees, plus donations I assume. If I remember correctly they even have books published in minority Romance languages, novels in Korean, that kind of thing, a big section with Slavic language novels etc. It also has much more non-fiction.
1 x
Megalomanoglot. Bof!

User avatar
Adrianslont
Blue Belt
Posts: 827
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2015 10:39 am
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N), Learning Indonesian and French
x 1936

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Postby Adrianslont » Wed Jan 11, 2017 10:01 pm

In my part of Sydney it's:

Arabic (newspaper, magazines and DVDs only)
Chinese
French
Greek
Indonesian
Polish
Russian
Spanish

Can you guess which Municipality that is?

For some reason I thought you were a Melbournite, Smallwhite.
0 x

User avatar
CarlyD
Blue Belt
Posts: 608
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 5:44 pm
Location: California, USA
Languages: English (N), Spanish--A2, German--now studying, A2
x 1323

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Postby CarlyD » Wed Jan 11, 2017 10:35 pm

In my small northern California library we have large sections for Spanish and Russian plus small sections for Mandarin and probably a few books in other languages. The "big" library in our main city has a good bit more but still the largest collection will be Spanish.
0 x
2024 15,000 pages Reading Challenge--pages: 1180 / 15000

User avatar
jeff_lindqvist
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3135
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2015 9:52 pm
Languages: sv, en
de, es
ga, eo
---
fi, yue, ro, tp, cy, kw, pt, sk
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2773
x 10462

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Wed Jan 11, 2017 11:39 pm

Our library carries novels in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, English, German, Dutch, Romanian, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, BCMS, Greek, Latin, Romani, Persian, Kurdish, Dari, Arabic, Tigrinja, Amharic, Somali, Finnish, Meänkieli, Estonian, Saamic, Turkish, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese... and Esperanto.

Enough?
2 x
Leabhair/Greannáin léite as Gaeilge: 9 / 18
Ar an seastán oíche: Oileán an Órchiste
Duolingo - finished trees: sp/ga/de/fr/pt/it
Finnish with extra pain : 100 / 100

Llorg Blog - Wiki - Discord

User avatar
tiia
Blue Belt
Posts: 735
Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2016 11:52 pm
Location: Finland
Languages: German (N), English (?), Finnish (C1), Spanish (B2??), Swedish (B2)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=2374
x 1997

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Postby tiia » Thu Jan 12, 2017 9:32 am

Bao wrote: In the SLUB (Sächsische Staats- und Landesbibliothek) they have many more languages present, as the library doubles as a university library so they have material for the language degrees, plus donations I assume. If I remember correctly they even have books published in minority Romance languages, novels in Korean, that kind of thing, a big section with Slavic language novels etc. It also has much more non-fiction.


The SLUB got a quite huge donation of Finnish books, as there had been a small Finnish library, that donated all their 300 books, half of them in Finnish.
2 x
Corrections for entries written in Finnish, Spanish or Swedish are welcome.
Project 30+X: 25 / 30

User avatar
verdastelo
Orange Belt
Posts: 202
Joined: Sun Jan 31, 2016 1:20 pm
Languages: Punjabi (N), Hindi-Urdu (near-native), English (C1+), Russian (B1+), French (A2+), Chinese (A1+), Kannada (A0+)
x 740

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Postby verdastelo » Thu Jan 12, 2017 10:09 am

I’m from Patiala. The city is fortunate to host a State Library, one of the three in Punjab (India). I’ve been a regular to the Musafir Memorial Central State Library for more than 10 years and have spoken to the staff there on several occasions. Here’s what I’ve learned from our conversations and my own observations:

  1. The library is home to between 135,000 and 150,000 books in four (or three, depending on whether you consider Hindi and Urdu different) languages: English, Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi.
  2. As far as shelf-space goes, between 50-60 percent is occupied by English books. Most of them are from the 1950s and 1960s. The remaining shelf-space is equally divided between Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu.
  3. All the Urdu books have been moved to a section which is kept locked most of the time. Although Urdu was a popular language in the 1950s and 1960s, few people can read it now. The last Urdu book I borrowed was covered in a millimeter of dust.
  4. The library has a little more than 20,000 members; not all of them are active. I have observed that most of the days, only between 50 and 100 people visit it.

That’s it.

PS: The figure of 150,000 books comes from this website: http://punjabnewsusa.com/2013/03/13/ਸੈਂ ... ਾਇਬ੍ਰੇਰੀ-ਦੀ/ . For some reason I couldn't link to it. It also says the government wants to sell it. Probably they want to create a temple of capital - a mall, a casino, a bank, or some stupid structure in its place.
1 x
The life of man is but a succession of vain hopes and groundless fears. — Monte(s)quieu

User avatar
smallwhite
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2386
Joined: Mon Jul 06, 2015 6:55 am
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Native: Cantonese;
Good: English, French, Spanish, Italian;
Mediocre: Mandarin, German, Swedish, Dutch.
.
x 4876

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Postby smallwhite » Thu Jan 12, 2017 10:59 am

Adrianslont wrote:Can you guess which Municipality that is?


I don't remember seeing that combination so it should be a library I haven't been to (Horns. Chats. City. Burw. Wave. Hurt.). With such a large range it should be a major library and not too far from the City. With such a broad range it should be a hub kind of place. With those language it should be somewhere South. With no Vietnamese I'm ruling out Cabramatta. I want to say Parramatta but I'd expect more Asian languages there.

Bankstown?

:D That was fun :D I love libraries.
1 x
Dialang or it didn't happen.

User avatar
smallwhite
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2386
Joined: Mon Jul 06, 2015 6:55 am
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Native: Cantonese;
Good: English, French, Spanish, Italian;
Mediocre: Mandarin, German, Swedish, Dutch.
.
x 4876

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Postby smallwhite » Thu Jan 12, 2017 11:09 am

Thank you for everyone's detailed answers. It's been really eye-opening! I didn't expect the libraries in so many places to be so multilingual. Lucky yous!
1 x
Dialang or it didn't happen.

User avatar
Adrianslont
Blue Belt
Posts: 827
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2015 10:39 am
Location: Australia
Languages: English (N), Learning Indonesian and French
x 1936

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Postby Adrianslont » Thu Jan 12, 2017 11:35 am

smallwhite wrote:
Adrianslont wrote:Can you guess which Municipality that is?


I don't remember seeing that combination so it should be a library I haven't been to (Horns. Chats. City. Burw. Wave. Hurt.). With such a large range it should be a major library and not too far from the City. With such a broad range it should be a hub kind of place. With those language it should be somewhere South. With no Vietnamese I'm ruling out Cabramatta. I want to say Parramatta but I'd expect more Asian languages there.

Bankstown?

:D That was fun :D I love libraries.


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.
0 x

User avatar
jeff_lindqvist
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3135
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2015 9:52 pm
Languages: sv, en
de, es
ga, eo
---
fi, yue, ro, tp, cy, kw, pt, sk
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2773
x 10462

Re: In what languages does your public library stock books?

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Thu Jan 12, 2017 12:36 pm

I should perhaps add that of the novels in our... 30+ languages, the majority are in Swedish (possibly over 40 000), English (maybe 4000), German (700+), French (500+), Spanish (600+), Russian (200+), Polish (100+), Persian (500+), Arabic (800+) and Finnish (800+). Other languages might have only a handful of books.

Non-fiction, reference books etc. are mostly in Swedish and English (well over 100 000 in total). Maybe a few hundred books in other languages.
0 x
Leabhair/Greannáin léite as Gaeilge: 9 / 18
Ar an seastán oíche: Oileán an Órchiste
Duolingo - finished trees: sp/ga/de/fr/pt/it
Finnish with extra pain : 100 / 100

Llorg Blog - Wiki - Discord


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: emk, tastyonions and 2 guests