The Multilingual Library purchases and lends out books, audio books, movies and music in the following languages: Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Bosnian, Burmese, Dari, English, Finnish, French, Hausa, Hindi, Yoruba, Chinese, Croatian, Kurdish, Lithuanian, Dutch, Oromo, Punjabi, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Shona, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Tamil, Thai, Tigrinya, Chechen, Turkish, Twi, Hungarian, Urdu and Vietnamese.
Gradually, other immigrant groups entered Norway leading to a demand for books in languages such as Arabic and Turkish.
Deichmanske bibliotek / Oslo Public Library was therefore given the national responsibility for meeting these multilingual demands, and as from 1975 the Government, represented by the Norwegian Ministry of Culture, has allocated an annual amount towards this activity.
The practice soon became popular and the demands on competence, as well as the increased work load forced new ways of organising the activity.
In 1983 Deichmanske bibliotek / Oslo Public Library set up a Section for literature for immigrants.