I should have been more clear - largest in physical size - 500,000 sq ft. The Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil is 150,000 sq ft.
Let us imagine a truly globalized library that does not attempt to cater to local needs but rather tries to collect all books available everywhere. It would indeed have a large English section (but by no means close to a majority) simply because many books are published in that language. There would also be massive collections in Chinese, German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Russian, etc. English would not be utterly dominant. For this thought experiment, I have not tried to get accurate statistics but it should not be difficult.
You forget about research libraries, that is, those belonging to universities. Those will have large collections of English language items, especially scientific works. In those, the English items could potentially outnumber the ones in the local language.
Google says those are two different libraries.
The Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro is the largest library in Latin America and the seventh largest in the world… its collections include about 9 million items.
The National Library of Brasília (“Biblioteca Nacional de Brasília” in Portuguese) occupies an area of 14,000 square metres (150,000 sq ft), consisting of reading and study rooms, auditorium and a collection of over 500,000 items.
I live in a town in German-speaking Switzerland. The school/town library has all of its electronic media available online.
German: 36,811 items
English: 728 items
Swiss German: 165 items
French: 15 items
Other languages have 12 or fewer items.
That’s not including the physical media.
Students speak Swiss German at home, then start learning German in kindergarden, English in 3rd grade and then French in 5th grade.
In addition to the school/town library, I could borrow items from the cantonal library. Their digital content website is available in both German and English.
Yes, two different libraries and they are roughly the same size. Biblioteca Vasconselos is physically much larger than both. But we are sort of getting off-topic now, the main point is that the majority of the books in it are in the local language, not English.
If you take the number of books published by country as a proxy, it looks like this (link to wikipedia.)
| 1 | United States | 2013 | 275,232 | New titles and re-editions | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | China | 2013 | 208,418 | New titles and re-editions | |
| 3 | United Kingdom | 2020 | 186,000 | ||
| 4 | Japan | 2017 | 139,078 | New titles and re-editions | |
| 5 | Indonesia | 2020 | 135,081 | ||
| 6 | Italy | 2020 | 125,948 | ||
| 7 | Russia | 2019 | 115,171 | ||
| 8 | France | 2018 | 106,799 | ||
| 9 | Iran | 2018 | 102,691 | New and revised | |
| 10 | India | 2013 | 90,000 | total: revised editions not included; 26% in Hindi, 24% in English, and the rest in other Indian languages | |
| 11 | Turkey | 2020 | 88,975 | ||
| 12 | Spain | 2020 | 83,622 | ||
| 13 | Germany | 2018 | 79,916 | ||
| 14 | South Korea | 2018 | 63,476 | New | |
| 15 | Brazil | 2018 | 46,829 |
More books than I will ever be able to read, that is for sure.
I guess there is big overlap between the books published in UK and in USA. And I am afraid that many books published in Germany, Italy, Spain, France and many other countries that make it into the best-seller lists are now translations from English.
Sure, but I think that’s merely a sign of increasing internationalisation, rather than necessarily anglicisation, of the publishing business. It’s not at all uncommon to find translations from, say, French on German or Italian bestseller lists (and vice versa). English is very dominant globally in TV/streaming shows and films, but less so in literature.
Yes, it seems I was not clear, sorry. I was talking about Penguin Random House Bertelsmann publishing might, not about cultural imperialism. I spoke about the books that make it into the best seller lists, many small editors still publish locally. Only they seldom have the PR departments to make it onto the lists regularly.
Moderator Note
Other forums have different standards, but in FQ we ask that you focus on the facts.
In other words, instead of giving your opinion about the OP, instead focus on what is factually incorrect about his post, as most of the posts in this thread have done.
As I suggested way back in post 3
I have been to both public libraries and a university library in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
The public libraries had a small section of English and other foreign language books. However there seemed to be some English books in the topic sections (I don’t know the proper term for this) as well. In the Gardening section for example, there might be a few English language books in the really big library. In the smaller libraries, nope. Just in the Foreign Languages books sections.
The University library had a ton of English language books right next to the Dutch (and presumably other languages) ones.
I wasn’t paying all that much attention and this was 10+ years ago, so this is barely FQ.
Subsequent visits to Rotterdam have focused on the bars.
My town has about 40% native English speakers, 50% French and 10% other. The town library seems to have more French than English titles, but not a lot more. Magazines are mostly in English (mostly American), although they subscribe to both the French and American editions of Scientific American.
But it seems to follow the population breakdown reasonably closely (except for the other, which are not represented in the library, AFAIK).
Of course it would depend on the country, the type of library and its budget, the availability of books in local languages, the number of local languages, literacy levels in different languages and use of media other than books.
India has almost fifty official languages and a population that values education. This is enough languages that many newspapers and meetings are conducted in the lingua franca of English, and this applies to some available literature though I am sure you could find popular titles in any tongue.
I’m hoping the Spanish libraries have Don Quixote translated into Spanish for their communities.
¿Traducido del castelano?
It was written in Early Modern Spanish, which IIRC is kinda like Shakespearean English to modern English.
Many have already pointed out how this isn’t the reality at all. As a European, I concur. Large city libraries in even small countries like Finland are filled to the brim with books in the local official languages. Tens of thousands of books in these small languages are published each year. There are books in English in the libraries, too, but they are only a fraction of the whole.
Right. 
My point was a number of books in English language libraries are translations from other languages. Which in turn means there’s no lack of material for a Spanish library.
There are loads of translations that involve no English, too… German to Russian or what have you. English is an important language but not as central as we tend to think it is.