As immigration and upward mobility have continued to reinvigorate Queens over the last two decades, circulation has doubled. Last year, 811,000 “active borrowers”—nearly 40 percent of the borough’s population—visited the library 14.3 million times, borrowing 20 million items. Each year, the library lends an average of nine books or other items for each Queens resident, more than twice the per-capita number of volumes than the New York Public Library lends in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Queens’s per-capita number puts it near the top in library circulation nationwide, just behind San Jose and Phoenix. Half a million people a year attend at least one of the library’s free educational programs, ranging from homework help sessions to classes on dining etiquette to academic lecture series on such topics as “The Path of the Ancient Greek Philosophers” and “Turkey’s Entrance into the EU: Problems and Prospects.”

But numbers don’t convey the full extent of the public’s demand. On one recent Tuesday at the Flushing branch, a dozen or so people were there a quarter-hour before the official opening time of 1 pm, waiting to get in. Just a half-hour into its day, the Flushing library becomes as crowded as a bus station, with patrons browsing the amply stacked bookstands, working on computers, and reading and writing at tables. Despite the crowds, the library stays quiet, suggesting that a certain reverence goes with the enthusiasm. Even children and teenagers, though they run and holler up the library’s outdoor steps, hush without prompting once inside and get right to work.

Because nearly half of the residents of Queens are foreign-born, one of the library’s most practical services is to help the borough’s African, Asian, Hispanic, and Middle Eastern immigrants assimilate into American society, just as it helped German, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants become citizens a century ago. The library is particularly effective at this task, because it recognizes a key truth lost on many contemporary immigrant-advocacy groups: newcomers can’t succeed in America unless they speak English. Hence the library’s wildly popular, and free, English-for-Speakers-of-a-Second-Language program—the largest such initiative in the nation, serving 3,000 students annually. Each semester, the program must turn people away, sometimes two prospective students for every one who gets a slot.

Take the Number 7 train to Main Street in Flushing, walk two blocks to the spacious four-story curved-glass library, and you’ll see how keen many Queens newcomers are to learn English. In the basement adult learning center, as many as 40 students will be listening to English-pronunciation CDs, doing grammar exercises on computers, watching language videos, reading vocabulary texts, and engaging in halting conversation with one another in a new tongue. One recent Thursday morning, a dozen adult students listened intently as a librarian took them on a tour of the center, explaining in slow, clear English the wealth of materials available. When she’d finished, the students eagerly examined the shelves, filled with books on everything from basic vocabulary to idioms, as if they’d stumbled upon a treasure trove.

While many students can learn to read and even write English on their own, several told me, they cannot learn to speak it by themselves—and often there’s no one to practice with at home. That’s why so many students crowd into the library’s English classes. During the first session of a nine-week class at the Flushing branch, focusing on job readiness, nine immigrant students—their backgrounds ranging from Ecuador to Bulgaria to China—met in a room with walls papered with large-print conjugations of irregular English verbs. Instructor Heather Dutiel detailed in careful cadence the basics of looking for a job in America, explaining tricky verbs—the difference between “have you” and “do you”—at points in the lecture. After some instruction, Dutiel showed sample resumés and asked the students to discuss their job searches among themselves. The students, with various English-fluency levels, spoke tentatively in their only common language, asking what kind of employment each sought—“Full- or part-time?” “In Queens or Manhattan?”—then writing down the answers to read to the class.

The course satisfies a real hunger for self-improvement. Sandra, 33, came here nine months ago from China and works in a bakery on Main Street, Flushing. She’d love to learn enough English—“telephone English,” as she puts it—to find better-paying work in a Manhattan office. Galina Stoyanova, 38, was a college-educated engineer with nearly two decades’ work experience in Bulgaria, but she applied with her husband for the green-card lottery, wanting their 12-year-old to get an American education. Because Galina isn’t English-proficient, she’s had to work at a discount store near Times Square to pay the bills. She wants to learn enough English to begin working again in her field.

Similar striving animates the Central Library of Queens, in Jamaica: on any weekday, nearly two dozen students diligently work in the adult learning center annex until the 8:30 closing time. One recent evening, eight students showed up for a conversation group, several of them after long workdays. Volunteer instructor Chris Miller asked them to introduce themselves, gently prodding them with questions about their home countries and current jobs. He then asked what the “three best things” were about living in New York. Students invariably included the word “freedom” in their answers—and they clearly view the library’s resources as a key stepping-off point for making the most of that freedom.