Maple Ridge Public Library and NewToBC are co-hosting another session of Library Champions, starting Friday, April 5.
The Library Champions Project is a three-month volunteer program for new immigrants. It is a great way to make connections and build relationships in your community.
During the project, Library Champions are trained to conduct outreach to other new immigrants. The LCP’s four training sessions focus on building communication, presentation and outreach skills and on the wide range of programs, services, and resources that are available in libraries and out in the community. There are still spots available.
Another way Fraser Valley Regional Library seeks to better serve the culturally diverse communities of Maple Ridge and the other municipalities in the Fraser Valley is through the World Languages Collection. The collection contains materials in 14 languages and is designed to meet the needs of native speakers of a variety of European, Asian and Middle Eastern languages.
The collection is shared between FVRL’s 25 libraries and is made up of 42,000 items, including adult and children’s fiction and non-fiction print material, as well as DVDs and CDs. These materials are listed in the online catalogue and are kept current by an annual infusion of new titles.
The FVRL World Languages Collection includes materials in Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, Hindi, Japanese, Polish ,Russian, Dutch, German, Italian, Korean, Panjabi, Spanish and Vietnamese. Materials in all of these languages are available at the Maple Ridge Public Library. Additionally, we have downloadable ebooks and audiobooks in French, Hungarian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
Another great benefit of the FVRL World Languages Collection is the wonderful selection of foreign films offered to all who use the library. If you are not able to travel, immerse yourself in another land by watching one of the more than 1500 foreign films available from your library.
If you do not speak another language, but would like to learn, FVRL has an excellent language learning resource accessible on our website called Mango Languages. Mango provides online courses for more than 70 languages. With your library card, you can set up a Mango account for free. Mango Languages provides a self-paced learning program that teaches languages through relevant and topical dialogue using four key components — vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar and culture.
For those who are learning English, Mango provides several programs in English, each from the starting point of your native language. For example, you can take English for Arabic speakers, English for Korean speakers or English for Spanish speakers, among several others.
• To learn more, come by the library, call us at 604-467-7417 or check out our website at fvrl.bc.ca.