“There’s a Sense of Pride”: The Multilingual Children's Library as Perezhivanie

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ABSTRACT Many libraries serve multilingual communities, however, research around multilingual libraries remains sparse. This study provides a theorized understanding of how a multilingual library is experienced by stakeholders, drawing on interviews and focus groups, event evaluations, and field observations. Findings highlight how multilingual communities value the metaphorical space, via the physical space allocated to stock and events, with borrowing influenced by complex rationales. The study troubles traditional notions of success within the field of library science, necessitating a reconceptualization of stock, borrowing and events in a multilingual library, aligning with notions of belonging and ownership that the multilingual library represents.