The San Diego Public Library (SDPL) encompasses 35 branch locations throughout the City of San Diego. The Library's mission is to respond to the information needs of San Diego’s diverse communities; ensure equal access to local, national and global resources; anticipate and address the educational, cultural, business and recreational interests of the public; and develop and provide welcoming environments. Last year, the Library attracted over 6 million visitors, more than the combined total attendance at Sea World and the Zoo. This year 2007 is a special year for San Diego Public Library as we celebrate our 125th anniversary. More than ever, the 35 Libraries are vibrant community centers that offer a wealth of cultural and educational programs.

In fiscal year 2004-05, the SDPL had 680,936 registered borrowers, over half of the city’s population for the same year (1,305,736).  For more information on the SDPL, visit their web site at www.sandiegolibrary.org

San Diego Public Library offers non-English book collections in 24 languages ranging from Arabic to Yiddish.  The largest collection by far is Spanish which is heavily emphasized in Spanish-speaking neighborhoods.  Russian is being developed extensively, and, along with the major west European and East Asian languages. The Central Library also maintains extensive collections of pedagogical materials in print—dictionaries, grammars, readers—for over 100 languages from Amharic through Zulu.

The Library’s DVD collection has films in these  Languages: Arabic, Aramaic, Bengali, Khmer, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Dzongkha, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Inuktitut, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Macedonian, Mongolian, Dagbani, Norwegian, Persian, Farsi, Polish, Portuguese, Pashtu, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Croatian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Thai, Tibetan, Vietnamese, Yiddish, Zulu.