Among the books that the Parc-Extension library in Montreal shines on its shelves are rows of books in Tamil, Bengali and Gujarati. In Quebec, the libraries of the Old Capital will work this year on two new microcollections, one in Arabic and the other in Portuguese. The major public libraries in Quebec discreetly speak several languages. And intend to learn more.
In Parc-Extension, from his library nestled just behind the railway, librarian Alex Bourdon-Charest speaks proudly of the nine small foreign language collections he nurtures, in addition to those in French and English.
“We have some 3,500 documents in Greek, because we have had a population in the neighborhood for a very long time. After come the languages of South Asia, including Tamil, Urdu or Hindi, among others. We have Spanish. And the smallest is the collection in Italian, with only a few hundred books. »
“We see multilingual collections as a tool for cultural rooting and a path to francization,” adds Isabelle Morrissette, of the Intercultural Library in Côte-des-Neiges — the only one in Montreal, she says proudly, to offer books in Tagalog, from the Philippines.
About 5% of the City of Montreal’s collection is available in languages other than English or French, and some 50% of libraries have multilingual collections. The budget devoted to purchases for these collections is of the order of less than 5% of expenditure.
When books follow people
Adding collections in foreign languages is a “general trend of libraries in the West”, confirms Éric Therrien, director of the Gabrielle-Roy library and collections, in Quebec. According to Statistics Canada, Quebec had 15.3% recent immigrants in 2021. “There is a desire to align with the composition of the population. And we know that the library can be a welcoming place for newcomers,” says Mr. Therrien.
The Grande Bibliothèque had seen the trend coming: when it opened in 2005, it had a multilingual collection; 11 languages, including German, Haitian Creole, Portuguese, Russian, Romanian and Vietnamese. At 1er last February, there were 20,405 documents there, and 24,000 borrowings are planned for 2022-2023.
This collection is now in full transformation. “We are in the process of migrating everything online, explains Mélanie Dumas, director of the universal collection. The collections will thus be accessible to a greater number of people. We will only keep on site the collections in Spanish, Arabic and Mandarin”, the most popular, which constitute 70% of the loans of physical documents.
In Quebec, “we have seen a 6 to 7% increase in foreign language loans since last year,” explains Mr. Therrien. Spanish has been developed steadily for about eight years. We have 7,000 documents in Spanish out of 1.3 million documents”.
“We started only at the central library, continues the director. When it grew, we developed it in the neighborhoods where the Spanish-speaking population lives: Limoilou, Vanier, Les Rivières. There, we must have about ten of our 26 libraries that have Spanish. Interlibrary loans allow the circulation of these documents.
Indian cookbooks in Hindi
The development of these small polyglot collections is thought differently. “I don’t want to reintroduce Agatha Christies or Harry Potters,” said Mr. Bourdon-Charest. “In French, we buy a lot of translations. For foreign languages, I ask booksellers to find me the bestsellers in the original languages. »
“There are fewer specialized areas — no math books, for example. I bring in fiction, popular documentaries, like biographies, health and diet books. And cookbooks, because it’s always popular. And children’s books. »
These children’s books are particularly popular in libraries in Quebec. To the point that 50% of Spanish documents target them. “It’s much more than in French, where we will have 35% of youth documents for 65% for adults,” said Mr. Therrien. The other libraries surveyed by The duty in the context of this article did not experience the same phenomenon.
“We are also going to offer translated books by Quebec authors, because these collections are integration tools,” adds Éric Therrien. And Quebec city tour guides too; anything that can promote learning about the local culture. »
Rate a book you know nothing about
One of the challenges for libraries that include new languages, “is the intellectual processing that we have to do with books,” explains Marie-Jo Hamel, librarian at the Center de services sociaux in Montreal. Creating the bibliographic record, if it does not exist in shared North American databases, can be a challenge.
“You have to ask yourself how you are going to represent the document in the catalog so that people have access to it and find it. Each language has its challenges, and the realities are different from one to another. We do not always have employees who speak these languages And who are able to do the intellectual processing while respecting the rules. »
“Even distinguishing fiction from a documentary, because the rating system is then different, for certain cultures, it is not easy, details Mme Hamel. The books do not have the same codes or the same genres everywhere. The separation between a true story and a fiction is not a universal notion. »
“There is also the question of other alphabets, such as Urdu or Tamil. In Montreal, we don’t put data in foreign languages in the catalog — you would need to have the appropriate keyboards to search for them, then. »
“In Montreal, we do transliteration: we try to translate the sounds of these languages into the Roman alphabet, knowing that not everyone hears sounds the same way, explains the person who also manages concerted acquisitions for Montreal. . It’s a lot of energy and knowledge. There is a lot, a lot of work behind these collections…”
In Montreal, statistically, these collections come out less than other documents. “But I see the impact they have for people coming to a public library for the first time,” says Bourdon-Charest. It creates an attachment, it makes the library a welcoming place. This personalizes it, too, since the languages are not the same depending on the neighborhood.