SUSTAINING LANGUAGE DIVERSITY: THE ROLE OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES.

Linguistic diversity is an essential part of the living heritage of humanity. Libraries have developed within literate cultures and have traditionally promoted linguistic diversity through a wealth of resources and services to diverse communities. The focus for public libraries now is to engage with new and emerging communities from oral cultures. This has led to the libraries in Queensland reevaluating their collections and services to be inclusive of the tangible and intangible cultural heritage for future generations. Edited version of a paper presented at the November 2007 Queensland Multicultural Summit [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]