Books in your own language

Published on 04 April 2024

The State Library has provided books in community languages to the people of NSW since 1974. The service’s 50th anniversary offers the opportunity to reflect on its history.

In the early 1970s, responsibility for providing books in different languages lay with public libraries, which purchased their own collections in response to demand from their communities. The NSW State Library had been sending boxes of reference books to country libraries to support their needs since the 1890s, but changing demographics as a result of shifting immigration policies meant that libraries were struggling to keep up with the growing demand for resources in different languages. In 1974, the State Library launched the Foreign Language Lending Service with the stated intention of ‘providing books in less common languages to all libraries, and books in common languages to those who have no way to meet local demand’.

In 1974 only 16 languages were offered, in 2024, you can now access 69,000 items in 43 languages. To find out more about the history of the service click here.

Members of MidCoast Libraries can borrow a bulk loan of books from the State Library free of charge. Requests for bulk loans can be placed using the multicultural bulk loan request form. You can request ten, twenty or thirty items for a loan period of three or six months.

Bulk loans are available in the following community languages: Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Burmese, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hungarian, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Maltese, Nepalese, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Serbian, Sinhalese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, and Vietnamese.

Each language collection has adult fiction and non-fiction books across a range of genres and subjects. Children's books are also available, including board books, picture books, chapter books, non-fiction and bilingual books in selected languages.

Ask us if you'd like to request a multicultural bulk loan in a language that suits you.