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What are multicultural bulk loans?

 

The State Library has collections of books in 43 community languages, which can be borrowed by public libraries on behalf of clients. This is a free service.  

How can your library borrow a bulk loan from the State Library

Public 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.  

What can your library borrow

Public libraries can borrow bulk loans from collections in the following community languages:

Arabic Bengali Bulgarian Burmese Chinese Croation 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
Vietnamese            

Each language collection has

  • adult fiction in a range of genres, where available
  • adult non-fiction, including cookbooks, history, psychology, biographies, society and more
  • children's books including
    • board books
    • picture books 
    • chapter books
    • non-fiction across a range of subjects
    • bilingual books in selected languages
    • Vox Books (junior bilingual print books with an audio recording built in so users can listen and read along) - limited to 2 per bulk loan.

Audiobooks and a small number of large print books are available in some languages:

Audiobooks Vox Books  Large print
Chinese Arabic Chinese
Croatian Chinese French
Czech French German
Danish German Hungarian
Dutch Hebrew Italian
Finnish Hindi Spanish
French Korean Urdu
German Russian  
Greek Spanish  
Hungarian Tagalog  
Italian Ukrainian  
Polish Urdu  
Russian Vietnamese  
Spanish    
Swedish    
Vietnamese    

 

You can use these these tools and promotional resources to promote the bulk loan collections to your community.

Check the Community Language Directory for public library holdings in community languages.

English as a Second Language (ESL) Collection

Public libraries can also request a bulk loan from our ESL collection. This collection is designed to support the independent learning of English, with a focus on beginner and intermediate level ESL resources in both book and audio format. The collection has a large number of readers, bilingual dictionaries, industry specific resources and English for specific language speakers. Requests for ESL material can be placed via the multicultural bulk loan request form.