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 343 public libraries in the East Midlands open for more than 10 hours each week, and 46 mobile libraries serving a regional resident population of 4.45 million. 
 
Public libraries are open for almost 11,000 hours every week across the region and the East Midlands has some of the busiest libraries in the UK including Chesterfield Library in Derbyshire which recorded 662,093 visits in 2009/10.  Nottingham Central Library issued over 393,213 items in 2009/10, and Kettering Library in Northamptonshire recorded 420,616 visitors in the year. 
 
The region's public libraries stock over 6.4 million books, as well as more than 556,000 music sound recordings, talking books, videos and DVDs.
 
Over 852,000 new books and 125,000 audio visual and electronic items were added to library stocks in 2009/10.  East Midlands' public libraries lend around 22.4 million books and 1.9 million audio visual items every year. Almost 7,000 items were supplied to other library services from the region's libraries and over 9,000 items were received on inter-library loan.
 
There are over 21 million visits to public libraries in the East Midlands every year and there were an estimated 2.8 million visits to the region’s library websites.
 
Library staff answer over 2.5 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 1,500 FTE staff work in public libraries in the East Midlands and more than 1200 volunteers help libraries engage with their local communities.

Population and borrowers 2009-10  26Kb

Service points and mobiles opening hours 2009-10  25Kb

Bookstock and audio visual stock 2009-10  26Kb

Bookstock and audiovisual issues and ILLs 2009-10  25Kb

Busiest EM libraries 2009-10  17Kb

Staff and Volunteers 2009-10  25Kb