Fast Facts #580 - Foreign Language Collections

The purpose of this survey is to determine which libraries have materials in which languages and the size and format of those collections.

Completed: 6/16/2006

Requested by: NSLS

Library	What languages (besides English) do you have collections in?	How would you describe the collection: large, medium, small? Do you have numbers to support your estimates?	What formats do you have materials in for each of the languages?
Algonquin Area Public Library District	Spanish, Polish, Hindi, Gujarati (sp?)	Small	Books, Periodicals, AV
Antioch Public Library District	Spanish, French, Polish,	Small to very small	Print and video. We have some audiocassette books as well.
Barrington Public Library District	French German Italian Spanish Russian Polish Chinese Korean Hindi	Book collections are small. Movies have English subtitles. Including adult and children's materials: Polish-87 books, 10 movies Spanish-263 books, 87 movies, 1 periodical French- 61 books, 200 movies, 1 periodical German- 50 books, 22 movies, 1 periodical Italian- 10 books, 47 movies Russian- 50 books, 17 movies Chinese- 12 books, 35 movies Korean- 28 books, 4 movies Hindi- 28 books, 21 movies	books, VHS, DVD 1 periodical each in Spanish, French, German
Cary Area Public Library District	Spanish	small	Books, Periodicals, AV
Cook Memorial Public Library District	Russian Spanish Chinese French	Spanish - medium sized collection 27 cassettes, 79 DVDs, 290 cds, 2119 books: Russian - small collection 2/3 books and 1/3 DVD & videos: French - very small 47 books many more DVDs & videos: Chinese - emerging collection 65 books, 61 DVD & videos: THESE ARE DISTRIBUTED BETWEEN OUR TWO LIBRARY LOCATIONS.	DVDs, audiocassettes, CDs, books
Crystal Lake Public Library	INFO FROM OUR ELI RECORD Size of Collection: Large (1500+ titles) What Languages are Represented in this Collection? Polish Spanish How Can Users Access These Collections? Internet-Accessible OPAC What Percentage of this Collection is Uncataloged? 0-20% Are Foreign Language Speaking Staff Available to Help Patrons? Yes What Language(s)? French Greek Polish Spanish Does this Collection Include Fiction Materials? Yes What Languages are Represented? Polish Spanish Does this Collection Include Non-Fiction Materials? Yes What Languages are Represented? Does this Collection Include Childrens' Materials? No What Languages are Represented? Does this Collection Include Adult Materials? Yes What Languages are Represented? Polish Spanish Does this Collection Include Recently Published Materials? Yes What Languages are Represented? Polish Spanish Does this Collection Include Historical Materials? No
Deerfield Public Library	Arabic, Chinese (Cantonese & Mandarin) Danish, Dutch,French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese,Korean,Norwegian,Polish,Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish, Yiddish, Latin	Small - includes Reference Materials	Title Books Audio tapes CDs Arabic x x x Chinese x Cantonese Mandarin Danish x x Dutch x x x French x x x German x x x Greek x x x Hebrew x x x Italian x x x Japanese x x x Korean x x x Norweigan x Polish x x Portugese x x Russian x x Spanish x x x Swedish x x Tagalog x Turkish x x Yiddish,Latin, Czech, Bohemian, Finnish, Hungarian, Hawaiian, Esperanto ( most rep.by 1 item only) COLLECTION MAY BE WEEDED SOON
Des Plaines Public Library	Spanish, Russian, Polish, Gujarati, French, Italian, German, Hindi, Urdu, Korean	Medium: Spanish - 4,844 Polish - 2,118 Russian - 1,274 Gujarati - 606 Small: German - 173 French - 161 Italian - 100 Hindi - 162 Urdu - 129 Korean - 69 Numbers do not include DVD's or periodicals.	Spanish - book, cassette (for learning English & audiobooks), CD, DVD, VHS, magazine Russian - book, cassette(for learning English), CD, DVD, VHS, magazine Polish - book, cassette (for learning English) CD, DVD, VHS, magazine Gujarati - book, magazine French - book, cassette(for learning English), CD, DVD, VHS, magazine Italian - book, cassette(for learning English), CD, DVD, VHS, magazine German - book, cassette(for learning English), CD, DVD, VHS, magazine Hindi- book, cassette(for learning English), CD, DVD, VHS Urdu - book Korean - book
Dundee Township Public Library District	Spanish, Italian, French, Japanese, Chinese, German	Medium	cds, cassettes and cd-roms
Ela Area Public Library District	For Adults: Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Polish, Russian. For Children: Polish, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, German, Italian. We also have about 50 books in Hindi, 10 in Vietnamese, 8 in Urdu, and various other languages in small numbers (Hebrew, Greek, Portuguese, Tagalong, etc.)	Small for most collections. Spanish, Polish, Russian are medium. Chinese is growing. Our space is very limited. We can find out numbers, if needed, but do not have them readily at hand.	Print books, magazines and newapapers, films (primarily DVD format), music.
Elk Grove Village Public Library	(Foreign Film Collection) Arabic, Bengali, Bosnian, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Frence, Georgian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Inuktitat,Italian, Japanese,Korean, Kurdish, Mongolian, Norwegian, Persin, Polish, Portugese, Pushto, Romanian, Russian, serb0-Croatian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Tibetan, Vietnamese, Yiddish.	Small - Just over 600 titles. There may be as many as 60 or as few as 2 for any given language.	VHS & DVD
Indian Trails Public Library District	Korean; Polish; Russian; Spanish	We have about 252,000 items in our collection. Of these: Korean=818; Polish=1,896; Russian=2,708; Spanish=7,053; We have 612 dvds and vhs classified as foreign language, most of which are Spanish.	In each language we have print, and in most languages we have vhs, cassette, dvd, periodicals, newspapers. We have some Spanish in large print. Our CD collection also has a lot of Spanish music CDs interfiled with the popular music.
Lake Forest Library	polish	small; yes	print only
McHenry Public Library District	Spanish. We are investigating adding one or two magazines in Polish.	Spanish books 1720 copies; Spanish AV 207 items; 4 Spanish magazine titles. I'd call it small but I don't know what other libraries have.	Books, CDs, DVDs, and book/cassette or CD kits
Mount Prospect Public Library	Actively collecting books in: Korean, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Hindi, Gujarati, Urdu, Chinese, Japanese. We have a shelf or two of books in Italian, German, French, Vietnamese, Greek, and Tamil but we're not adding to them. We've also been actively collecting foreign language films in a variety of languages and we're getting ready to grow other non-English AV collections.	Small but growing. We have numbers for size and circulation of the collection.	Mostly books. We've been attempting to purchase books on cassette/CD in Spanish and Polish when available. We've also been actively building our foreign language film collection in a variety of European and Asian languages. We're also beginning to develop non-English popular music and magazine collections (we've had bits and pieces before but now will be growing the collections).
Niles Public Library District	Primarily Russian, Polish and Korean print, but also Spanish, Chinese, but our Youth Services Department has a few titles in just about every language. Our Video (VHS & DVD) foreign collection contains some of the above, as well as a small number of many different languages. The larger part of this collection is Hindi.	Medium--yes	Print and video
Northbrook Public Library	German; French; Italian; Spanish; Russian; Polish; Chinese; Japanese; Korean	medium	books
Palatine Public Library District	We have 16 languages. The largest collections are in Spanish, Polish and Russian.	The Spanish language collection is fairly large and in multiple formats. The total collection is approaching 10,000 items. The Russian and Polish collections are in the range of 1,000 items. Other language collections are smaller ranging from 50 to several hundred items.	DVDs are nice in that many offer a choice of languages to viewers. We have most of our languages in both books, magazines, sound recordings and video recordings.
Park Ridge Public Library	The Polish language collection is the largest because of the large number of Polish speaking patrons in our community. We also have a small collection of Spanish, French, Italian and German titles.	Our foreign language collection is small. Polish language books total around 500 adult titles. For the other languages the estimate is about 30 to 40 titles each. Our Childrens Dept. also has a small collection of Polish, French, Spanish, and Japanese.	Our main collection is books. But we do have a small collection of DVDs & Videos in Polish, French and Italian. We also subscribe to several Polish language magazines and a daily Polish newspaper.
Prospect Heights Public Library District	We actively collect Polish, Russian and Spanish titles for our adult collection. Our foreign film collection has a wider range of languages to include Somali and Vietnamese. But we purchase these films based on the film, not the language. Our Youth department has small collections of most major languages - Italian, French, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, in addition to Polish, Russian and Spanish.	We have about 600 titles in Russian and Spanish and 300 in Polish. The youth titles are few, just a sampling to assist with school assignments.	Aside from foreign films, the only non-book titles we purchase are items to help non English speakers learn English or to help English speakers learn another language. For these topics, we have cassettes, CD's, VHS, DVD's, and computer software.
Schaumburg Township District Library	Here are languages where we own more than 100 books: Korean (3,392), Spanish (2,188), Japanese (970), Chinese (558), Polish (408), Urdu (321), French (216), Gujarati (189), Hindi (185), Russian (176), and German (134). We have smaller collections in seventeen other languages.	The numbers were given in number #1 and for us our collection has increased greatly in recent years.	We also have 2,100 audio-visual items in other languages.
Skokie Public Library	Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Urdu, Vietnamese, Yiddish	Large--over 16,000 items for both Youth and Adult.	Books, DVDs, videos, some spoken word in the World Language collection. Music CDs are also collected.
Wauconda Area Public Library District	Mostly Spanish and some Polish	Small but growing rapidly	Mostly books, some music CD's and some DVD's, and a few e-books and e-audiobooks.
Waukegan Public Library	Spanish	Our collection is medium-large, with a larger children's collection than adult. Based on our end-of-year statistics, we have over 4,000 adult books, approximately 12,000 children's books, almost 1,000 adult audiobooks and music, about 200 children's audiobooks and music, around 300 adult VHS and DVDs, and approximately 150 children's VHS and DVDs. We also have magazines and children's kits in Spanish, but they do not have separate statistics.	We have books (reference, fiction, non-fiction, and paperbacks), audiobooks, music, movies, children's kits, and magazines.
Zion-Benton Public Library District	Spanish	Small. 520 adult print items. 825 juvenile print. 8 adult AV items. 70 juvenile AV.	Print and VHS and DVD videos.