Public Libraries in London

Public Libraries in London are maintained by the 32 London Boroughs and the Corporation of London. As the library authorities for London, they have a statutory responsibility to provide services to those living, working and studying in their area under the 1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act.

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

Did you know?

• There are 360 public libraries in London
• If libraries in places like hospitals and sheltered accommodation are included, London has a total of 2,238 libraries.
• Public libraries are open for 15,000 hours every week, or 780,000 hours every year.
• Public libraries stock 16,000,000 books, as well as 1,500,000 CDs, cassettes and talking books, videos and CD-ROMs.
• Public libraries lend 42,000,000 books every year. Over 7,600,000 CDs, cassettes and videos are loaned every year.
• There are over 50,500,000 visits to public libraries every year.
• Library staff answer almost 9,000,000 enquiries every year.
• Every library service offers access to the Internet - the vast majority free of charge.
• Over 4,000 staff work in public libraries.
• It costs each resident of London just over £20 per annum for the public library service.
• A total of almost £150,000,000 was spent on the Peoples' Network in public libraries . Public libraries generated almost £12,000,000, much of which was ploughed back into front line services.
  

To search London's library collections click here.