Public Libraries and "other" languages

I went to my local public library the other day, and on a whim I went over to the "foreign languages" section to see if they had any Russian children's books that might be nice and simple for picking up some vocabulary (in case you weren't aware, I'm currently learning Russian and Estonian).

I was intrigued to note that there weren't very many books in the Russian section at all. In fact, one person could borrow the entire stock of books on the shelf and still have "room" to borrow a couple of books from the rest of the library.

Now, even if the other two branches had the same number of books on their shelves, when you consider the fact that the books were a mix of fiction, non-fiction, adult and children's books...

Well, let's just say the average Russian living in this town has very little reading material. I don't know exactly how many Russians we have (I personally know three, and they don't seem to know each other so either the Russian community here isn't very close-nit or there are enough for them to get their "fellow countrymen" fix without knowing every single Russian in town), but I'll wager there are enough of them to warrant a slightly better selection of books.

Let's put it this way: I borrowed a cook book. Just one. It was the only Russian cook book there, so no one else gets to make Russian pastries until such time as I could be bothered returning it.

And, yes, I know how the system works. The State Library has a collection of books in foreign languages, which it circulates to the local public libraries on request. All you have to do to get more Russian books is ask. However, you kind of have to know what to ask for. You can't just rock up to the library, see a book on the shelf you haven't read before and think: "Oh, yeah, I may as well try it". Is that not one of the great joys of a library?

I was thinking there needs to be a better system (that's my 'thing' these days: "we need a better system"). Perhaps, when someone signs up for a library card, they could have the option of marking their "home language" on their form. For every person who has that home language, the library ensures they have at least five "new" fiction books and five "new" non-fiction books cycle through the library branches each month. That way, theoretically, each registered library user would have a reasonably large selection to choose from.

Say, for example, there were 25 registered Russian readers in town - that would make 250 Russian books on the shelves). Would that make an untenable number of foreign language books? Yes, probably, but if you consider the fact that we have three branches in this town, and all of the books would rotate between those branches for a period of approximately three months before going back to the State Library to be sent to another town, then it seems a bit more reasonable. Also, there's no reason why they can't bring back the same books every couple of years, as long as they aren't all the same books.

And, yes, that may get a bit ludicrous when you put together all of the languages spoken by different people around town... but dammit, what are libraries for, if not to fulfil our unreasonable expectations?