The New York Times recently reported that 12 percent of the Queens Library System's books, DVDs and CDs are in a language other than English; Chinese and Spanish top the list. According to the newspaper, the patrons of the library can benefit of titles in 59 languages, more than double a decade ago. 

"So important has acquiring foreign-language books become to the Queens Library’s mission that Radames Suarez, who supervises the Spanish collection, travels every year to the largest Spanish book fair in the world, in Guadalajara, Mexico", says the New York Times. "The Queens Library even has a staff demographer," adding that 39 branches of the system have Spanish collections. 

The increase in the offering of materials in other languages is a response to the diversity of the patrons. "Striving to cater to the intensifying globalization of its surrounding streets, the New York neighborhood library speaks your language as never before," says the paper.

The New York Times also mentions that the New York Public Library, serving Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, has seen an 8 percent increase in foreign titles, and the Brooklin Public Library, 10 percent. 

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