22/07/04 - Book into the library at the village shop

People in some rural areas of Cumbria will be able to click into the library when they pop into the village shop.

Cumbria County Council's library service is piloting a new kind of service to bring the library service nearer to home for people living outside the towns -- which is most of Cumbria. It means installing computers in local shops and sub-post offices alongside a store of books. The computers will provide a direct link to the library service and the books will be for borrowing.

Councillor Tim Heslop, county council spokesman for library and archive services, said:

“These library links are part of Cumbria County Council’s continuing efforts to improve library services in rural areas and support existing local services.

"The library links will be available during the opening hours of each host venue, allowing users to have much greater access to library services than we would have previously been able to provide using traditional services.”

Each library link venue will have a collection of paperback books which will be changed weekly and a computer linking to the full Cumbria library service catalogue. People will be able to use the link to take out and renew their books.