indian books library nsw
If you’ve been looking for books in Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil or other Indian languages in NSW, your local library may have more to offer than you realise.
The State Library of NSW’s Multicultural Bulk Loan Service gives NSW residents free access to books in 43 community languages, including seven Indian languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
Introduced in 1974, the service allows public libraries across NSW to borrow collections from the State Library and make them available to their local communities.
And it’s not just a handful of titles tucked away on a shelf.
The collection caters to both adults and children, with adult fiction across a range of genres as well as non-fiction covering subjects such as cooking, history and society. Younger readers can choose from board books, picture books, chapter books and non-fiction.
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Also available are audiobooks and Vox Books – print books with built-in audio narration, including bilingual titles – making reading more accessible for children and families.
Learning English, too
Alongside its community-language collection, the service provides English as a Second Language (ESL) resources, particularly for beginner and intermediate learners.
These include books and audio resources, bilingual dictionaries, industry-specific material and resources designed for speakers of particular languages learning English.
For NSW residents, accessing the collection is simple: contact your local public library and ask about the Multicultural Bulk Loan Service. Libraries can borrow material from the State Library collection for their communities, giving readers access to books that may not ordinarily be held on local shelves.
Got books to share?
The State Library is also accepting donations of books in languages represented in its multicultural collection.
Donated books must have been published within the past three years, be in brand-new condition and be suitable for leisure reading. For anyone with recently published Indian-language books they would like others to discover, it offers an opportunity to help grow the collection.
In a state where more than 30 per cent of the population was born overseas and hundreds of languages are spoken at home, access to books in the languages people grew up speaking matters.
A library is, after all, about more than having something to read. Finding a familiar language on its shelves can be a small but powerful acknowledgement that your stories – and your community – belong there too.
