Nottinghamshire County Council’s library visitors now have access to many of the world’s top national newspapers online at the touch of a button – thanks to a pioneering new scheme.

And recent high profile news events in Australia such as the tragic death of cricketer Phil Hughes may well have contributed to Notts’ library users searching for more information from Australian news outlets online, as well as people with ties to that country such as family or friends.

There have been 528 loans of the new e-newspapers in the first few weeks of the new system in Nottinghamshire libraries. Australian, Hungarian, Dutch and Chinese titles have proved the most popular, along with Guardian and Independent.

And it is the latest example of the county council demonstrating its commitment to its modernisation agenda in libraries offering excellent facilities, millions of books and the latest technology.

It comes as new figures released by the county council show the growing popularity of e-books, e-magazines and e-audio books which can also be accessed from county libraries.

And in terms of printed titles, three million adult books and one million children’s books are loaned from Nottinghamshire’s libraries each year.

Nottinghamshire County Council has teamed up with a new e-resource called PressDisplay which provides a facility for reading newspapers online. Some of the main advantages are:
• Free to all library members
• Available 24/7
• To over 2,500 eNewspapers
• From 100 countries in 60 languages
• Dedicated Apple and Android apps

However, there are others such as the ability to translate some articles, email or blog and content appears on the site before newspapers appear in shops.

Councillor John Knight, Committee Chairman for Culture, at Nottinghamshire County Council, said: “We aspire for our libraries to be modern, cultural, community and information hubs, and Nottinghamshire County Council’s libraries are at the forefront of enabling our library visitors to access a wide range of e-content, with the latest in the form of e-newspapers.

“People can access these services either from their local library or from their PC at home as long as they have a library card, and we are meeting the diverse needs of our library users with these services, as well as the millions of printed books that we have in our libraries which are loaned each year.”

In terms of e-content, from April to November this year there were the following loans in county libraries:

• E-books – 11,826 loans – the most popular have included titles by Lee Childs such as The Enemy and Echo Burning, and Jonas Jonasson – The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden
• E-magazines – 17,678 loans – the most popular have been Amateur Photographer, TV Times, and Woman’s Own, but more specialist titles such as New Scientist, BBC Good Food Magazine, Auto Express, Amateur Gardening all have good ratings.
• E-Audio – 3,136 loans – the most popular have been Patricia Cornwell – Dust, Hilary Mantel – Wolf Hall, and Graham Masterton – Broken Angels
For more details about what is available in your local library, you can find out more by visiting Nottinghamshire County Council’s website or contacting Ask Libraries on 01623 664943 or [email protected]