Evaluation of Arabic children’s books in the public libraries of Vienna within the frame of library services provided for child members who are native Arabic speakers

Abstract

Public libraries are one of the educational and cultural institutions supporting the native language development of the children from multilingual societies. In this study, the Arabic children’s books in the public libraries of Vienne within the frame of the library services provided for the child members who are native Arabic speakers in Vienne where people from different countries, cultures, religions and languages live together. The data which were applied in the study which was conducted by descriptive analysis method were obtained from the electronic online catalogues and web pages of the public libraries in Vienne. Within this framework, the services provided by the libraries for the child members who are native speakers of other languages were examined by analysing the webpages of the public libraries in the city for the study, and the Arabic children’s books in the public libraries were detected through the electronic online catalogues of the public libraries in Vienna. The detected Arabic books were analysed by classifying them based on the libraries they are in, their publish dates, age groups, languages, language use and contents. As a result of the study, it was discovered that the collection development policies related to the Arabic children’s books of the public libraries in Vienna primarily focus on the preschool period, that the majority of the Arabic children’s books in the public libraries are multilingual, and that contents of the books can help children to discover themselves and their surroundings. Additionally, it was also detected that some of the children’s books in the libraries have the content preparing them for multicultural and multilingual life and developing their empathy skills.