Top 5 language collections

The top five largest language collections in Victorian public libraries compose 69 percent of the total LOTE collections.

Another 10 languages have a total of 94,586 collection items (22 percent of the total LOTE collection).

These include Arabic, French, Russian, Sinhalese, Hindi, Japanese, Turkish, Polish, German and Croatian.

Source: Public Libraries Victoria, 2020

Moreover, the public library is one of the only few places in Australian society where you can easily access non-English literature and audiovisual materials, with the alternative being religious establishments (special libraries from temples, mosques and churches) and SBS online and retail outlets. Other libraries, such as academic and special libraries that hold nonEnglish material, are usually limited to an exclusive class of people (such as students and researchers) and are not for public access. Furthermore, these institutions tend to hold language collections based on geopolitical and geoeconomic interests, which is why you are more likely to find Chinese, Japanese and European languages rather than Vietnamese or Urdu, for example. Seeing languages other than English in a public library allows Australians to appreciate other cultures as having their own inherent history and literature.

The world stage

Another dimension to LOTE collections is their importance to Australia’s geopolitical and geoeconomic place in the Asian century. Australia has always grappled with its national identity and place in the world as a previous colonial outpost of the British Empire, located in the far southeast corner of the globe, surrounded by countries unlike itself in regard to culture and traditions (eg the Indonesian archipelago and Papua New Guinea as our closest neighbours). This has proven problematic in Australia’s identity as mostly a monolingual, English-speaking state in the multiethnic, multireligious and multilingual Indo-Pacific. It is through the presence of language collections other than English that pulls Australia within its regional context and part of the Indo-Pacific, and Australia is better for it. Among the larger language collections in Victoria, the top five are: chinese, Italian, Vietnamese, Greek and Spanish.

It will be ever more important to have an increasingly bilingual and multilingual Australia, with the dominance of Asian migrants having command of multiple languages. Just as multicultural Australia grows and morphs itself based on the known and unknown immigration changes, so too will public library language collections.

Chinese

150,508 items

Italian

50,523 items

Vietnamese

39,939 items

Greek

35,926 items

Spanish

24,412 items

References

ABS, 2017. Census reveals a fast changing, culturally diverse nation. www.abs. gov.au/ausstats/abs@. nsf/lookup/media%20 release3 Anderson, Z. (2013).

Reading ‘multiculturalism’: A historiography of policy and ideal in Australia. History Compass, 11(11), 905–917.

Public Libraries Victoria, 2020. Public Libraries Victoria LOTE Collections at 30 June 2020. www. plv.org.au/wp-content/ uploads/2020/10/9.-201920-PLV-LOTE-CollectionsSummary-Report-002.pdf

SBS, 2018. Settlement Guide: Benefits of bilingualism. www.sbs. com.au/language/ english/en/article/ settlement-guidebenefits-of-bilingualism/ hr1t1jbzx