- There is a great interest in the wordless collection
The Multilingual Library in Norway offers books in 97 languages - and a collection of 90 silent book titles. Librarian Oddbjørn Hansen has curated the collection: - There are over 350 languages spoken in Norway. Thus, the wordless books are an important addition to what we offer our readers. The interest in our wordless collection has exploded over the last years.
The Multilingual library is part of Norway´s national library. Their collections is not readily available for individual readers, but an offer to all the local libraries in the country* The idea for the collection was born at the International Book Fair in Bologna Italy. One of Hansen´s colleagues returned from the fair and told him about the importance of silent books in the international world of children´s literature. Hansen immediately saw the potential and started building the collection. This required a lot of work:
-It is challenging to search for wordless books. When we make purchases from foreign countries, it is almost impossible to identify what books will be wordless. Our solution is to search throught the different shipments as they arrive. We have also been lucky to receive large gifts, for example from Korea, where there have been several wordless books included.
The interest for the wordless collection has had an increase of over 450% over the last few years. Part of the explanation for this is that the library started focusing more on this collection, buying more titles and increasing the marketing. The Multilingual Library is a depot library for all other libraries in the countries, meaning that any local library can order a package or specific titles of wordless books.
Hansen has experienced some challenges in working with this collection. – It is hard to give age recommandations for books when there is no text to guide you. We could wish for more competance about how to do this from reading the pictures. So far we have made conservative choices when doing the recommendations. Hansen also wishes for a wider range of international choices in the wordless titles, but this is challenging, as some countries do not publish a lot of children´s literature at all.
Oddbjørn Hansen has worked in the Multilingual library since 2001. In addition to the wordless collection, he is responsible for purchasing books in 15 different languages, which means keeping track of the popular and up-and-coming authors in each one.
– I wish I had even more time to dive into the world of wordless books, but I feel that we have had a strong start and I am excited about where we are headed.
*As an individual reader, you can visit your local library and ask them to order some wordless books for you!