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By law and tradition, public libraries are charged with the task of serving all the residents of their communities. But how does a library serve a community in which many different languages are spoken, where residents may have different needs and interests than the library’s traditional clientele, and may not even be familiar with the concept of the public library? This was the issue the New Jersey State Library began to address with its one‐day workshop, “Library Services to a Multilingual Community,” held 17 April 1998. This article includes a conference overview by Steckman and adaptations of the two keynote addresses. Schull offers some observations that come from her experience as executive director of Libraries for the Future, a national advocacy organization promoting equal access to information and library services. Tandler discusses Queens Library’s efforts to reach the needs of its nearly two million residents–one‐third of whom come from over 100 different countries and almost half of whom speak languages other than English at home–through their New Americans Program.

In recent years there has been growing discussion in the library community regarding the civic role of the public library. The discussion is rooted in a deep-seated professional commitment to the value of the public library as an institution of democratic society. As a recent president of the American Library Association, Nancy Kranich, wrote in 2001, “Libraries serve the most fundamental ideals of our society as uniquely democratic institutions. As far back as the nineteenth century, libraries were hailed as institutions that schooled citizens in the conduct of democratic life.” (p. vi).