Language Resources

Reaching out to a diverse community means offering signage, bookmarks, policies, etc. in languages other than English.

If you haven't discovered WebJunction, click right now to explore this wide-ranging community for library staff to share ideas, solve problems, take online courses and more. Of special note is the area on services to Spanish Speakers.
The Brooklyn (NY) Public Library makes basic web resources, including library information and the online catalog, available in Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Hebrew and French. BPL also offers information about its Multilingual Center, which has books, magazines, and newspapers in the major languages spoken in Brooklyn, including Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Hebrew, and Haitian Kreyol. The Center also houses additional materials in French, Yiddish, Hindi, Bengali, Polish, Italian, and Arabic.
The Queens Borough (NY) Public Library) provides library web interfaces in Spanish, French, Russian, Chinese, and Korean. Its WorldLinq site offers local and worldwide resources in Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, French, Korean, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian.
Spanish language resources from SOL (Spanish in Our Libraries) and PLUS (Public Libraries Using Spanish). PLUS includes Spanish-language versions of common library forms, flyers, and signs as well as the Dewey Decimal classification system; book summaries; guides to the language and to library Spanish; programming ideas; and a lot more. Look for the menu on the far left of the page.
The Learning Light developed a Spanish phrase list just for librarians and a list of English phrases for Spanish speaking patrons. These resources are free, but the site also sells a 16 hour Spanish course for librarians.
Basic Spanish for librarians
Survival Spanish for librarians
Spanish in Libraries: A Bilingual Workshop for Librarians
Multicultural bookmarks are available for free download.
Bilingual Public relations materials for librarians. This site includes press releases and news articles.
Reforma offers a number of valuable resources, including "Spanish for Librarians," "Spanish Internet and Library Terminology," and a list of bookstores and distributors with Spanish language and bilingual books.
Your Dictionary.com links to online dictionaries in over 280 languages, plus a gateway to specialty dictionaries and other language resources.
Among the free resources offered by Transparent Languages are conversational survival phrases, pronunciation sound files, and short articles for reading comprehension in 30 different languages.
A clearinghouse of language-related Internet resources, I Love Languages provides a gateway to dictionaries, languages lessons, translation software, and other tools available on the WWW.

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