Public Libraries in the East Midlands

Public library services in the East Midlands are delivered by the nine local authorities of Derby, Derbyshire, Leicester, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire and Rutland.

All public library services offer books for adults and children, CDs, talking books and videos/DVDs for loan, have information services that deal with enquiries from the straighforward to the highly complex, and offer access to ICT, including the Internet. Many of these services are free.

There are 298 public libraries in the East Midlands open for more than 10 hours each week, and 47 mobile libraries serving a regional resident population of 4.4 million.

Public libraries are open for almost 10,000 hours every week across the region and the East Midlands has some of the busiest libraries in the UK including Nottingham Central Library and Chesterfield Library in Derbyshire which recorded 664,616 visits in 2007/8.  Nottinghamshire's West Bridgford Library issued over 40,000 items in 2007/8, and Wooton Fields Library in Northamptonshire recorded over 516,000 visits in the year. 

The region's public libraries stock almost 7 million books, as well as over 550,000 music sound recordings, talking books, videos and DVDs.

Almost 860,000 new books were added to library stocks in 2007/8.  East Midlands' public libraries lend around 23 million books and 2 million audio visual items every year. More than 8500 items were supplied to other library services from the region's libraries and over 12,000 items were received.

There are over 22 million visits to public libraries in the East Midlands every year.

Library staff answer over 2.6 million enquiries every year and every library service offers access to the Internet - the majority free of charge. There are more than 2,700 computers for public use, offering access to the library catalogue and internet.

A wide range of on-line resources are available for reference, information and study purposes, many of them are accessible 24 hours a day through library service websites.

Over 1,900 FTE staff work in public libraries in the East Midlands and more than 740 volunteers help libraries engage with their local communities.

Book and audio-visual issues. Interlibrary loans   

Bookstock and audio visual stock   

Opening hours of service points and mobiles 

Population and borrowers   

Staff and volunteers     

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