PurposeThis study aims to survey academic users in order to identify their needs and expectations about multilingual information processing when they interact with digital libraries. The study specifically aims to determine the disparities in needs and expectations when users speak different languages.Design/methodology/approachA survey was designed to fill in the gaps in the knowledge about academic users' multilingual needs and expectations for digital libraries. The survey questionnaire incorporates questions about different aspects of the participants' multilingual needs and expectations covering multilingual needs, the multilingual behavior, often‐used multilingual information resources, and desired functions for the multilingual services, retrieval and interfaces in digital libraries. The results are obtained through statistical analyses and clustering methods.FindingsOverall, participants exhibited many multilingual needs during their academic activities. They often require multilingual information when they access academic databases or web information. Frequently, participants use online translation resources and tools, but they are not satisfied with the translation quality. Participants want many multilingual capabilities in digital libraries; they also want more sophisticated multilingual search interfaces. However, participants from different countries or who speak different languages show significant differences in their multilingual needs and expectations of digital libraries. This study's three user groups demonstrated clear differences in all aspects of multilinguality examined, as did the three latent groups identified through the clustering methods.Originality/valueFew studies have examined the multilingual information process in digital libraries from the point of view of academic users. This study draws its inputs directly from real academic users from different countries and provides insights into multilinguality in digital libraries.