Children’s Book Borrowing Up - annual library survey

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For the fourth year in succession statistics from the annual library survey conducted by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy show a rise in issues for children's books across the year.

For 2008-9 - the National Year of Reading - children's fiction showed a 6.1% rise in lending over the year, with 80.1m issues. Lending for children's non-fiction showed a smaller rise of 0.7% at 5.3m issues. Meanwhile the number of children's books bought was up by 8.8% to 3.62m, with non-fiction up 3.3% at 0.79m.

Adult reading dropped yet again, with issues for fiction and non-fiction both declining over the year (by 0.1% and 1.8% respectively). Total library visits fell during the year by 1.1% to 324.99m. However the number of web visits increased by 49% year on year, up from 76.2m in 2007/8 to 113.5m.

Miranda McKearney of reading charity The Reading Agency praised national and local initiatives like the National Year of Reading and TRA’s Summer Reading Challenge for helping turn things around and commented: 'There's been a really big push to create a new reading offer which has been at its most marked with children's reading, and the statistics show that the concentrated effort has had an effect.'

In 2009, the Summer Reading Challenge was responsible for 19.7million children’s book loans up 48% from ten years ago, 725,000 children took part, up 10% on 2008. The 2010 Summer Reading Challenge SPACE HOP launches in July.

Most Popular Libraries

The Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library is once again the most popular library in Britain, both in terms of the number of visits (1,519,524) and the number of books issued (1,124,233). Birmingham Central Library was the second most visited (1,355,150) and Chelmsford Library issued the second highest number of books (740,927).