In what languages does your public library stock books?

[smallwhite]

In what languages does your public library stock books?

I'm most interested in knowing about non-English-speaking countries. In Hong Kong, there are both Chinese books and English books. Probably 50:50 in terms of shelf space. And hardly any books in other languages. The whole city is served by one public library system so the above applies to the whole city.

But Hong Kong is sort of bilingual. I wonder what it's like in countries like Spain or Germany that I suppose produce lots of books, and then in smaller countries with fewer native speakers like Sweden, which in turn would probably be different from the Czech Republic where English is not as common, but where another language might be common.

I'm also curious about English-speaking countries and other parts of Australia. Here in Sydney, most books are in English, of course. Each municipality has its own library system, which also stocks books based on the ethnicity of the local population, eg. there're Chinese books in the Chinatown library. There can be multiple shelves of them, or in the case of not-so-minor minority languages like Chinese and Korean, rows of them. On top of that, you can borrow foreign language books from the State (reference) Library through your local library; they offer a very wide choice. These seem to be mostly fiction.

Let's just stick to public government libraries, collections of which reflect language interests of the general public. And I don't mean language-learning books - "Teach Yourself German" would be an English book.

[galaxyrocker]

In the Gaeltacht in Ireland, there's books available in both English and Irish, though all the heading titles are in Irish and the librarians speak Irish. There might be a few in/on other languages, particularly language learning books, but I didn't look closely for those.

[Elenia]

I found English and French in Sweden, as well as Swedish. I've also seen quite a few other languages, although I couldn't tell you proportions or names (as I wasn't really looking for anything in particular). This was in the public library in Malmö. The libraries here in England mostly stock English books and the FIGS. I haven't been to a public library here in ages though, so I don't know what the selection is like now.

[Brun Ugle]

Here in Norway it varies according to where you live. In Oslo, they apparently have quite a large library with books in many languages. I live in a medium-sized town. Most of the books in our local library are in Norwegian, both Bokmål and Nynorsk, but there is a fairly large collection of books and audiobooks in English. There are also about 2 shelves each of books in German and Spanish, one shelf of books in French and half a shelf in Italian. There are also a couple of shelves worth of books in Sami, both Northern and Southern Sami. In addition, sometimes there are books among the non-fiction that just happen to be in a different language, usually Swedish, Danish or English. Videos are in a variety of languages, depending on whatever TV shows and movies are popular. That is the permanent collection of the library.

There is also a rotating collection of books in various languages that gets sent around to different libraries. I think the books are there for a few weeks and then get sent on to another library and new books come. The languages have varied over the years as the population of the town changes. I think at the moment they are Arabic, Kurdish, Persian, Russian, Polish, Thai, Bosnian, Amharic, Tigrinja, Turkish, Dutch, Somali and probably a couple of others that I'm forgetting. There is usually between half a shelf and two shelves worth of books in each language.

In addition, we can order books from other libraries. We can do this either in person or online. When our Spanish book club here on the forum read "La casa de los espíritus," I went online and ordered the book. The local library didn't have it so they found the nearest available copy and had it sent to my local library for me to pick up.

[aokoye]

In the US this is going to be based entirely on what city or county the library is in which is also going to affect how much funding the library has. So much so that the question "what language do your country's public libraries stock books in" is almost laughable (though this isn't necessarily obvious if you haven't spent extensive amounts of time here).

The Multnomah County Library system (which is the public library system I use) has books in circulation in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Russian, Vietnamese, Japanese, French, German, probably Cantonese, and so on. You can also use interlibrary loans and get a lot of books that way.

[tomgosse]

In Marlborough, Massachusetts our public library has books in Spanish and Portuguese as well as in English.

[smallwhite]

In the US this is going to be based entirely on what city or county the library is in which is also going to affect how much funding the library has. So much so that the question "what language do your country's public libraries stock books in" is almost laughable (though this isn't necessarily obvious if you haven't spent extensive amounts of time here).

I grew up in a sort of city-state and I guess it shows! I don't always remember that between the individual (me) and the country (Hong Kong) there can also be the city and the state or province. I'll change the thread title!

[embici]

Albanian
Arabic
Bosnian
Chinese
Croatian
English
French
German
Gujarati
Hindi
Hungarian
Italian
Persian/Farsi
Punjabi
Polish
Romanian
Russian
Serbian
Somali
Spanish
Tagalog
Urdu
Vietnamese

[Systematiker]

My local public library: English, and a small selection (<25) in Spanish

The closest large city: English, Spanish, French

When I lived in Munich, the municipal library had of course German, a separate section for English, and the "foreign langauges" section (right next to foreign langauge instruction) had several cases each of French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Polish, and Russian. When they remodeled, they no longer displayed (but still had) the Dutch stuff, and reduced the presence of everything else (all the books stayed, they were just put in the magazine).

The Stuttgart municipal library had a better selection.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek had nearly everything in the magazine, I'd be interested to know what they didn't have.

[aokoye]

Oh I should perhaps clarify, the biggest library in Portland likely has all of the languages I originally listed and more. It's also the one that I go to the most though it's not the closest to my house. The closest library (which I only go to if I'm picking up books that I have on reserve because it's tiny) has English, Spanish, probably Arabic, Somali, and potentially some other languages.

In all of the libraries the kids section has books in multiple languages and in the central library (which is where I generally go) has books all over I think. I have a feeling the majority of the non English language books are children's books which, if anything, says there are a ton of children's books that aren't in English that are in circulation. This is also helpful for parents who have kids in language immersion programs.

The languages that the library has fewer books published in are generally all in one place but languages like Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese are more spread out.