North Yorkshire County Council is to develop its libraries into "information hubs" to ensure workers from overseas have adequate access to vital services and advice.

Concerns have been growing that many of the thousands of migrant workers who have arrived in the county in recent years are not being supported while living in often-isolated rural areas.

The largest number of migrant workers come from Poland, and the council is now bolstering book collections in their native language.

It is hoped that by attracting them into libraries, they will also be able to access information on services ranging from housing to heathcare.

Libraries are already popular meeting places for migrant workers who have taken advantage of Internet access to email friends and family back home.

But the county council hopes to attract even more migrant workers into its libraries, which have seen more than £6m invested in the last four years.

The council's executive member for library and information services, Coun Chris Metcalfe, said: "We want migrant workers to become part and parcel of North Yorkshire's communities, and libraries are seen as key to doing this.

"We want them to feel relaxed and comfortable in the community, and hopefully one way of achieving this is by giving them books in their own languages.

"We have invested heavily in our libaries, which are about much more than just books. They are becoming places to meet and access key services.

"They are in the heart of the communities, and North Yorkshire is bucking a national trend which has seen libraries elsewhere in the country experience falling use. The county council has shown particular wisdom in investing in libraries, and we want to carry on moving forward positively."

The county's libraries first started to develop foreign language book collections after Kosovar refugees whose first language was Albanian began to settle in Ripon in the late 1990s.

Ripon library has also begun to supply books in Russian and Latvian.

The county council has also made books in Urdu available at Skipton library, along with dual language books for children in Urdu and English.

It has given an initial £16,000 in funding to build up the Polish language collection.

It's team overseeing the project has been helped by Grzegorz Kubas, a Polish librarian who moved to the UK to improve his English and is now working at Harrogate library.

Mr Kubas studied to be a librarian in Krakow and is using his Polish contacts to develop the collection, which includes contemporary best sellers as well as classic works.

So far the collection holds around 1,200 books which are now housed in 14 larger libraries in the county, including Filey, Knaresborough, Richmond and Pickering.

However, smaller libraries which do not house Polish stock will nonetheless be able to supply books on request.

Mr Kubas said: "Being able to access Polish books has made a huge difference to the lives of Polish people who have come to live in North Yorkshire."

North Yorkshire has emerged as a prime destination for many overseas employees working in a vast range of jobs from tourism to construction and agriculture.

The cheap and readily available workforce which has arrived since the expansion of the European Union in 2004 is vital to scores of the region's companies.

A total of 10,000 migrant workers are thought to be living or employed in North Yorkshire alone.