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 sevices are free.

There are 298 public libraries in the East Midlands open for more than 10 hours each week, and 52 mobile libraries serving a regional resident population of 4.3 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 758,000 visits in 2005/6.

The region's public libraries stock almost 7 million books, as well as over 520,000 music sound recordings, talking books, videos and DVDs.

Over 850,000 new books were added to library stocks in 2005/6 and public libraries lend around 24 million books and 2.5 million audio visual items every year. Around 10,000 interlibrary loans were supplied and 15,000 items were received in 2005/6.

There are over 23 million visits to public libraries in the East Midlands every year.

Library staff answer over 2.7 million enquiries every year and every library service offers access to the Internet - the majority free of charge. There are more than 2,600 computers for public use with library catalogue and internet access in the region's libraries.

Over 1,600 FTE staff work in public libraries in the East Midlands.

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