Multicultural bulk loans
The State Library has collections of books in 43 community languages and English as a Second Language (ESL) resources. NSW public libraries can borrow a bulk loan from the State Library free of charge.
What can your library borrow?
Public libraries can borrow bulk loans from multicultural material in 43 languages and English as a Second Language (ESL) resources.
Multicultural collections
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 board books, picture books and chapter books, and 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.
Available languages and formats
- Books
- 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
- Vietnamese
- Large print
- Chinese
- French
- German
- Hungarian
- Italian
- Spanish
- Urdu
- Audiobooks
- Chinese
- Croatian
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- Finnish
- French
- German
- Greek
- Hungarian
- Italian
- Polish
- Russian
- Spanish
- Swedish
- Vietnamese
- Vox books
- Arabic
- Chinese
- French
- German
- Hebrew
- Hindi
- Korean
- Russian
- Spanish
- Tagalog
- Ukrainian
- Urdu
- Vietnamese
English as a Second Language (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.
Requesting a multicultural bulk loan
Use this form to request bulk loans of:
- multicultural material in 43 languages
- ESL resources
You can request ten, twenty or thirty items for a loan period of three or six months.
Check or update your bulk loan request
- Contact the bulk loans team to check the progress or update your multicultural bulk loan request.
- Sign in to your library account and see what's on loan, what's overdue and renew applicable items.
Contact the bulk loans team
Email: mc.bulk.loans@sl.nsw.gov.au
Networking
- Join the mcbulkloans email list to connect with other NSW public library staff who work directly with multicultural bulk loans.
Purchasing collections - LOTE and ESL
The Public Library Services team can provide advice on the purchase of materials in languages other than English (LOTE) and English as a Second Language (ESL) from suppliers in Australia and overseas.
Contact Shauna Miller (Monday to Thursday), Coordinator Multicultural Purchasing Cooperative on (02) 9272 1540, or email shauna.miller@sl.nsw.gov.au for more information.