Practice of multilingual supports: A pilot study of the top 25 circulation public libraries in the ALA

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) calls for building multilingual collections to support the community as a way to meet the basic goals of service of public libraries Accordingly, public libraries recognize the importance of serving immigrants of diverse ethnic backgrounds. Due to the lack of research about multi-lingual support in public library, this study will investigate public libraries’ multilingual supports in serving diverse populations. In efforts to capture public library practices of multilingual support, we will examine the current status of multilingual support in (1) perception of multilingual support by decision makers via Collection Development Policies(CDP), (2) library practices of foreign language book collections, (3) secured access of users to library websites by language support. Studying this, we will find answers our research question; How are at the administrative, practitioner, and user ends related to one another, and can this relationship provide predictions about the availability of multi-language support