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November 1995, vol. 27, no. 11
by Iris Winston, Staff Writer
The Saskatchewan Provincial Library's multilingual collection grew substantially after receiving more than 3 000 items from the National Library of Canada.
"Our multilingual alternative-format collection has received a terrific boost," says Gloria Materi of the Saskatchewan Provincial Library. "In fact, this has just about doubled the number of our large-print and audio items."
In March, the National Library donated its multilingual large-print and audio collections to the Saskatchewan Provincial Library. Dispersement of 1 616 large-print books in 25 languages and 1 479 talking books in 20 languages followed the decision to refocus the Library's Multilingual Biblioservice (MBS) as an advisory service to other libraries (see "The National Library's Multilingual Biblioservice: Update", National Library News, vol. 26, no. 10, October 1994, pp. 1, 3-4). Because the Library now concentrates on liaison and coordination rather than on circulating its own collections, MBS has been donating materials to libraries across the country to help them serve their ethnic communities more directly. Books from the former MBS collection are still available to Canadian libraries through interlibrary loan, although they are no longer housed at the National Library, a point made by Gloria Materi.
"All public libraries in the province [of Saskatchewan] can request individual titles or blocks of books by language or topic," she says. "We have also received several requests from Ontario already. The new acquisitions have been added to the online catalogue and are available to public libraries both in Saskatchewan and across the country."
Different locations but the same services the National Library's multilingual collection continues to be valued and used by Canadians.
Copyright. The National Library of Canada. (Revised: 1995-12-11).