Librarians say thieves and vandals appear to be targeting Chinese-language books and magazines at the Vancouver and Richmond libraries.
 
Beibei Zhang,  a multicultural outreach librarian at the Vancouver Public Library, says some readers are stealing pages.

"They cut out pages. For sewing books, they will peal off instruction sheets and even peel off pages. And sometimes they take out pages and leave the book here."

Zhang told CBC News the thieves make her job of providing more multilingual material more difficult.

"We're fighting so hard for resources for minority groups. At one end, you're fighting for it, and on the other you're damaging it."

Wendy Jang, the multilingual services co-ordinator for the Richmond Public Library, said thieves even stole from an educational display of damaged books and magazines she had put together.

"Originally we had about 12 to 15 items on display covering a range of damaged items. But now we only have two or three left."

Zhang says due to privacy issues, the identities of those borrowing books cannot be kept in library records longer than a couple of days.