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 299 public libraries in the East Midlands open for more than 10 hours each week, and 46 mobile libraries serving a regional resident population of 4.4 million. 
 
Public libraries are open for over 11,000 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 615,230 visits in 2008/9.  Derby Central Library issued over 346,000 items in 2008/9, and Mansfield Library in Nottinghamshire recorded over 343,000 visitors in the year. 
 
The region's public libraries stock over 6.7 million books, as well as more than 559,000 music sound recordings, talking books, videos and DVDs.
 
Over 920,000 new books and 130,000 audio visual and electronic items were added to library stocks in 2008/9.  East Midlands' public libraries lend around 22.6 million books and 1.8 million audio visual items every year. Almost 11,000 items were supplied to other library services from the region's libraries and over 12,000 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 3,213,000 visits to the region’s library websites.
 
Library staff answer almost 2.6 million enquiries every year and every library service offers access to the Internet - the majority free of charge. There are more than 2,500 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 1,560 FTE staff work in public libraries in the East Midlands and more than 1000 volunteers help libraries engage with their local communities.

Population and borrowers 2008-9  

Service points and mobiles opening hours 2008-9    

Bookstock and audio visual stock 2008-9

Book and audiovisual issues.ILLs 2008-9

Staff and volunteers 2008-9

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