London’s libraries include the UK’s national library, public libraries, university and further education college libraries and the libraries of hospitals and medical schools, professional and learned institutions and business and commercial organisations.
There are 385 public libraries plus 23 mobile libraries in London. Public libraries can be found right across the city, and 95% of Londoners live within a mile of one of these. London’s public libraries are open for almost 16,000 hours every week; that’s 800,000 hours every year. 48 libraries are open on
Sundays and over 200 are open after 7.00pm at least one day a week.
There are about 4,000 PCs in London’s public libraries, offering six million hours of internet access – most of it for free.
There were over 52 million visits to public libraries in London last year, an increase of about 3.5 million since 2001-02. More visits per head are made to London’s libraries than to public libraries in the UK as a whole: 7.1 per person in London, compared with 5.7 per person in the UK.
London’s public libraries lend 40 million books and over seven million CDs and DVDs each year. Library staff answer 9.5 million enquiries every year, from finding a local doctor or community group to assistance with advanced academic research.
There are 150 academic libraries within 54 higher education institutions in London, ranging from large libraries like the internationally important British Library of Political & Economic Science at the London School of Economics to smaller ones like the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Last year higher education libraries in London recorded over 25 million visits and loaned over 21 million items. Most of their resources are available to all those with a real need to use them and over a fifth of users are from outside higher education.
One of the world’s greatest libraries, the British Library, is in London. It receives a copy of every publication produced in the UK and Ireland and houses an astonishing 150 million items with three million new items added each year. As well as books, the collection includes manuscripts, maps, newspapers, magazines, prints and drawings, music scores and patents and over 16,000 people use the collections each day.
There are 110 libraries with a health or medical focus in London, ranging from the nationally important resources of the Wellcome Library to the specialist collections of health support groups such as Arthritis Care.
In 2005 the MLA Designation scheme was extended to include library and archive collections as well as those belonging to museums. Of the 39 awards made to collections held by England’s archives and libraries, eight awards were made to London based libraries.