We all think of our library as a place to borrow books from, which is a great thing in itself as it saves us from buying things we might only read once, and spending a fortune on them. However, libraries have a lot more to offer than just books you can borrow.

Libraries often offer CD’s and DVD’s that you can borrow, most make a minimal charge for these, but it’s often quite low ranging from maybe 50p-£2 for a CD or £1-3 for a DVD, but they usually let you borrow them for a week at a time, so its still a lot cheaper than hiring one from a rental shop. If you’re thinking of learning a language, libraries often loan out language CD’s as well, these normally come in sets and cost a bit more to borrow, but you can usually borrow these for 3-4 weeks at a time. Books on tape/CD can be a real boon not just to people with sight difficulties, but to people who are going to be in hospital for an operation as well.

Most libraries have a reference only section as well, this is where you might expect to be able to find information on a range of subjects if you’re studying, but they’re quite useful in other ways too. For example most reference libraries will hold a full set of Phone books for the country, and they’ll have business directories for local businesses so you can find out who does what. Another thing most libraries do is to subscribe to a range of magazines and newspapers. These can be specialist magazines on different subjects – they might hold car magazines so you can find out what’s good to look for if you’re buying a second hand car, or daily newspapers where you can look for jobs or cars for sale for example. I think when job hunting their services can be particularly useful as they will often be able to tell you the details of all the local agencies in the area, and with the papers to look through too, you could save yourself some money at a time when you really need to!

These days with computers and the internet being a major resource in our lives, a lot of libraries also have computers that people can use to go online for a small fee (sometimes free depending on the library or your circumstances). There are often printers so you can print what you need to again sometimes at a small charge. (You might even be accessing this web page from a library!).

Libraries can also be great resources for finding out information about local events that might be taking place, or the history of where you live, if you’re searching for a person then they may be able to help too. Some libraries can offer careers advice to people, and others may have genealogy records you can access. It’s easy to think of a library just as a place to borrow books, but they do have a lot more to offer. Just think, if you borrowed a dvd once a week instead of buying it, borrowed a couple of books once a month instead of buying them, and did the same for looking at your favourite monthly magazine, you might save yourself £20-30 a month!