Last week we were fortunate to hear from professionals in the field of Library and Information Science about their programming, reference services and collections for non-English speaking population of London, Ontario. Heather LaVallee, Sherwood Branch Supervisor, Jodi Lewis, Jalna Branch Supervisor, and David McCord, LPL Coordinator, Collections Management of the London Public Library gave a team talk about “Multilingual Access & Services at London Public Library”.

How many languages do you think the LPL collects for the use by the multilingual population in London? Which ones are they?

Please find the answer on the LPL’s website which also serves as a portal for searching library materials for adult fiction, DVDs and children’s materials.

There is also a hint on group shot below!

The discussion with a group of LIS students at FIMS was quite vivid, and the audience was grateful for the overview. There are numerous challenges with being able to search resources in any specific language, especially those that use non-Roman alphabets or syllabaries, like Mandarin and Arabic, but the team assured us that the Central Branch of LPL is the go-to place for physical access to resources in languages other than English. In addition, a lot of work is done in local branches to improve recent immigrant communiy’s abilities to access ESL materials and programs such as volunteer one-on-one conversations and group story times. I sincerely hope to have the team come back with an update in 2018!