Lincolnshire Help Centre

Absolutely nothing - it's free! We believe everyone should have access to their local library. That's why our library memberships are completely free*. All you need to do is sign up online or you can become a member by visiting one of our libraries. 

*Some items on our programme may come with an additional charge. Please ask at your local library.

You can sign up online or by visiting one of our libraries.

Proof of address is not required to become a library member, however, this will limit the items you can borrow. To borrow additional items, including DVDs, proof of name and address should be presented to a member of library staff. E.g. Driving Licence or Council tax/utility bill.

For a child’s membership a parent or guardian should present either a valid library card or proof of name and address. If proof of address has not been provided for the adult library card then the items the child can borrow will be limited.

Library members who have supplied proof of address may borrow up to 36 items; 30 books/talking books and 6 DVDs at any one time. Adult members who have not provided proof of address may borrow up to 6 books. Child members whose parent/guarantor has not provided proof of address will be able to borrow up to 3 books.

As well as borrowing books, your library membership gives you free access to our public use computers, online information resources and our digital library of thousands of eBooks, eAudiobooks, eMagazines, eNewspapers and eMusic.

Library membership needs to be renewed every 3 years to ensure the information in your account is accurate. If you have signed up for our free email notifications you will get a courtesy reminder in advance. 

If you would like to cancel your library membership, please speak to a member of staff who will able to assist.

Click on the "Forgot Password/PIN" link on the login page. Follow the instructions to reset your password. If you need further assistance, please contact library staff.

You can sign up your baby from birth for library membership. Child members do need a parent or guardian to act as guarantor.

You can update your contact information online by signing into your account or by visiting one of our libraries where a member of staff can assist you.

Lost membership cards should be reported immediately to any Lincolnshire Library. The cardholder, or the parent/guardian responsible for a child’s membership, remains responsible for the return of any item borrowed prior to such notification.

A replacement membership card can be issued on request. Identification is required. A replacement card fee of £2 is charged unless it is a change of name or the card has been lost through theft and a police crime number can be provided.

Library members who have supplied proof of address may borrow up to 36 items; 30 books/talking books and 6 DVDs at any one time. Adult members who have not provided proof of address may borrow up to 6 books. Child members whose parent/guarantor has not provided proof of address will be able to borrow up to 3 books. In addition to this members can borrow up to 10 eItems from our digital library at any one time.

Most items may be borrowed for an initial period of three weeks except for those items where special restrictions apply, particularly DVDs. The loan period for items borrowed from a Mobile Library is four weeks in line with their visits to communities. Items from our digital library can be borrowed for between 7 and 21 days.

Provided items are not reserved by another customer you can renew your items up to 6 times.

Yes, you can borrow or return items to any library, mobile library or community hub in Lincolnshire.

Overdue fees can be paid in person at the library or online. To pay online, log in to your account and click on 'Charges' in the account menu. To pay, click on the blue Pay button and follow the on screen instructions.
Please speak to a member of staff regarding any queries over charges.

At our libraries and community hubs books are issued for 3 weeks. On our mobile libraries, books are issued for 4 weeks (until the next mobile library visit).
Should you wish to renew your loan, you can do so in your account, provided it is not reserved for another customer.

You can borrow up to 10 eBooks or eAudiobooks at any one time on Overdrive/Libby. Magazines are unlimited.
On ULibrary, you can borrow up to 6 eAudiobooks at a time. 
On Freegal you can download 3 music tracks in MP3 format each week, and stream 3 of hours of music each day.
Pressreader does not have a limit for the number of newspapers or magazines you can access.

On Overdrive/Libby you can choose to loan items for 7, 14 or 21 days, and they can be renewed if not reserved by another customer. Items can be returned early should you wish to borrow an item and have already borrowed 10 items.
On ULibrary, eAudiobooks are issued for 21 days at a time, and cannot be returned early. 

There is no charge to borrow books provided they are returned or renewed before or on the date given for return.

There are some hire, late return and other charges, which must be paid as they are incurred. Lincolnshire Libraries, in agreement with Lincolnshire County Council, reviews their fees and charges every year, and the rates are displayed in every library. 

Talking Books on CD are available to hire at all libraries, mobile libraries and community hubs. They cost £1.25 per week to hire for adults. Children's talking books are free to hire and there is no hire charge for exempt adults due to visual impairments.

Entertainment DVDs are available for hiring at larger libraries and at mobile libraries. Costs are as below:

Adults - £1 per week
Children's - 50p per week
Mobiles - £1 until next scheduled visit

Visit our dedicated Printing and Photocopying page to find out more. 

You are recommended to register to receive emails which will allow us to tell you if your books are getting close to their due date for return or are overdue. To avoid items becoming overdue you can renew them in person at any Lincolnshire Library, Mobile or Community Hub, by phoning the Lincolnshire County Council Customer Service Centre or through our online library.

We do not charge for books and talking books returned one day late. Overdue charges are applied at the next opening session of the library the item is returned to. DVDs are subject to the hire charge again on the first day they are late.

There are no overdue charges for children's items borrowed on a child account, or for exempt adult customers.

Overdue charges for non exempt adults are 25p per day for the first week and then £1 per week up to a maximum of £8 per item.

You should discuss any concerns you have about overdue charges with a staff member. In certain situations charges may be waived in recognition of extenuating circumstances.

You can pay library charges online via your account or in person at the library. Our core staffed libraries accept card payment as well as cash payments.

Please speak to a member of staff so that they can assist you.

You can pay library charges online via your account or in person at the library. Our core staffed libraries accept card payment as well as cash payments.

Book a room using our room booking service online here, or in person at the venue. 

The majority of our events and activities do not require a booking, however for those that do, please visit the activities and events page and follow the instructions on the relevant activity page.

If your room booking requires minor additional information to be supplied, you can enter this in the "special requests" box during checkout.
If your room booking is for a large scale event, you may need to talk to us about event spaces instead. Find out more about this service here, and contact us to discuss your needs. 

You can cancel bookings by contacting the site where you room is booked and talking to one of our team.

Details regarding accessibility, such as wheelchair access are listed on each library's page.

We welcome donations of books to our libraries, however, we need to apply criteria when choosing to accept them to ensure our stock meets the required standard.

When deciding whether to accept a donation we take into consideration current stock holdings and usage, anticipated use based on our knowledge of what issues in our libraries, and the staff time and servicing costs involved in adding a book to our collections. As a general rule, we do not add to stock items that are over 5 years old.

Any donations not added to our stock are usually disposed of through book sales or via our agreements with book dealers, enabling stock to be recycled and any income generated reinvested in the library stock.

If you wish to donate books you can drop them off at your local library during opening hours. We do not accept any books with conditions or where ownership of the donated book(s) remains with the giver.

Donated books may be removed and disposed of at anytime due to condition, low usage or out dated content.

We do not accept donations of the following formats:

DVDs, Blu Ray, and DVD cases.
Music CDs (and cases).
Talking Books, CDs or Cassettes.
Newspapers old or new.
Periodicals, magazines or journals.
USB files, E-Books or e-Audio.
Children’s annuals or novelty books.
Proof copies, abridged versions, workbooks or photocopies.
Photographs (local) will be considered on a case by case basis; contact your local library in the first instant.

We are unable to collect your donations. A Lincolnshire company: Anybook.biz may be willing to collect your donations for free and nominate a library (hopefully Lincolnshire) to receive a share of the proceeds. Contact them via https://www.anybook.biz/contact-us/ to find out more and if your books are suitable for collection.

If you cannot find the item you are interested in on the catalogue, then you can place a request for the library service to consider purchasing the item (up to 3 months ahead of publication) for a non-refundable £1 admin fee.

Please note, we do not automatically purchase requests. We take into consideration: price (books priced at over £50 are not usually purchased); UK publishing rights and availability of books in the UK and from our book supplier; suitability of item for library lending and the likelihood that the requested item will be of interest to other borrowers in Lincolnshire Libraries. We do not accept requests for DVDs or Blu Ray.

Please complete the “Request an item not in stock” form and email to: LincsLibrary.Support@GLL.ORG

Request an item not in stock Form - E-mail Version

Request an item not in stock Form - Printable PDF Version

This service is not open to authors or publishers. If you have a publication you wish to bring to our attention please email LincsLibrary.Support@GLL.ORG. Please note we will only reply if we require further information.

If your request is not suitable for purchase and falls into the required criteria we can try to locate and request a copy of the item from another UK library service or the British Library via an Inter-Library Loan. Please note that Inter-library Loans can only be requested through and collected from our core staffed libraries and are only available to customers aged 18 and over.

For more information on Inter-Library Loans, please see the "How do I request an Inter Library Loan?" question below.

To make a request for Inter Library Loan, please follow the procedure for requesting an item not in stock.
All requests are assessed to determine whether they will be purchased and added to the collection, or whether they should be requested as an Inter-Library Loan.

If your request does not meet the criteria for purchase, and falls into the following criteria, we can try to locate and request a copy of the item from another UK library service or the British Library via an Inter-Library Loan.

ILL Request Criteria:
Out of print
Of little general interest
High purchase price (Books priced at £50 and over are unlikely to be purchased).
Unsuitable content or format
Old/out of date
Obscure publisher
Article from journals

There is a charge of up to £11.15 (variance depending on the lender’s charge) towards the cost of procuring the Inter-Library Loan. A non-refundable admin fee of £1.00 is payable on placing the request and the remaining balance is added to your account when the book arrives in the county.

Please note that Inter-library Loans can only be requested through and collected from our core staffed libraries and are only available to customers aged 18 and over. We are unable to offer this service at Mobile and Community Hub libraries.

To authorise an Inter-Library Loan, please answer 'Yes' to the question 'Willing to go out of county' in the request form.

‘Access to Research’ gives free access to over 30 million academic articles and can be accessed for free using the People’s Network computers at any Lincolnshire Library

If the article you require is not included in Access to Research holdings then we can make a request to the British Library for a photocopy of it on your behalf. The charge for this service is £7.35; in addition to a non-refundable administration charge of £1.00 taken at the time of placing the request. You must be over 18 to use this service and a copyright declaration form must be signed in the library when you collect your article.

Although we will make every effort to obtain the requested item as quickly as possible, we regret that we are unable to guarantee it will be available for collection by a particular date as the supply of these items is outside of our control.

We would like to hear what stock you would like to see in Lincolnshire Libraries. Please send your comments to Lincslibrary.Support@gll.org with the subject heading 'Stock Comments'.

We do not guarantee to buy all items suggested by members of the public. Stock selection is subject to the following criteria:

Price (including availability and discount available from our book supplier).
Availability in the UK (including UK publishing rights), this may exclude some titles available from online bookshops e.g. Amazon.
Physical quality of the book - is it suitable for multiple issues? We will decline to purchase novelty books, workbooks etc.
Publication date and currency.
Anticipated demand from other customers; including existing subject coverage in our libraries where applicable.
Reputation of author and/or publisher.
Available book fund.

Suggestions from Authors, Publishers or Organisations

If you wish to suggest we purchase your publications or wish to offer to donate your publications, please email us with details and where your book(s) are available to purchase. Due to the number of stock suggestions we receive we will only reply if we require further information.

Please note: Any books sent to us will be treated as a donation and we will dispose of items as we see fit (please see our “Donations” FAQ for further information).

Library members are responsible for the care and safe return of items in the same condition as they were in when borrowed, and to have examined all items at the time of borrowing.

Library members, or the parent/guardian responsible for a child’s membership, are required to pay the cost of replacement of any item which is not returned to a Lincolnshire Library, or which is returned in a damaged condition. Replacement charges are based on the items price as recorded in the catalogue.

We do understand that accidents happen though, and in certain situations charges will be waived in recognition of extenuating circumstances. Please discuss any concerns you have about charges for damaged or lost items with a staff member to prevent further charges being added to your account. 

Community Hubs are run by independent community organisations with volunteers providing access to a selection of library materials and services. Books available include adult and children’s fiction and non-fiction, large print books and talking books. Public computers are available with printing and photocopying facilities.

Community Hub Libraries can be found in the following locations:

Alford, Birchwood, Boultham, Bracebridge (Bridge Church), Bracebridge Heath, Branston, Burgh le Marsh, Caistor, Cherry Willingham, Crowland, Deepings, Donington, Ermine, Heckington, Holbeach, Ingoldmells, Keelby, Kirton, Metheringham, Navenby,  Nettleham, North Hykeham, Pinchbeck, Ruskington, Saxilby,  Scotter, Spilsby, Sutton Bridge, Sutton on Sea, Swineshead,  Waddington, Wainfleet, Welton and Wragby.

Follow the link https://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/findalibrary for more information.

The contact email address for our core staffed libraries are listed on their homepages. For general enquiries about the Lincolnshire Library Services please email LincsLibrary.Support@gll.org including your library card number (if you have one). 

Alternatively you can call the Lincolnshire County Council Customer Service Centre on 01522-782010.

For queries relating to Online Resources such as eBooks, please contact: Lincs_Digital.Library@gll.org