Reading libraries open for longer and with browsing this month

There is great news this month for library users across Reading – we’ve extended our library opening hours and we are delighted to announce the return of browsing at six of our branches.

With all seven of our libraries now open, we are now working hard to extend opening hours and services. We will now be extending our opening hours by a further 48 hours per week across our 6 library branches.

Southcote, Whitley, Palmer Park and Battle are already offering browsing, and we have also extended Southcote and Whitley Library’s hours. From Tuesday 13 July, we will extend these hours even further, at Battle, Caversham and Whitley libraries.

We are pleased to say browsing will also be possible at Caversham from Tuesday 13 July and that Tilehurst will benefit from more hours and browsing from Monday 19 July.

These latest changes increase opening at our popular neighbourhood branches and restore opening to 70% of pre-Covid levels. Our plans for restoring Central Library services are ongoing, and appointments are still needed here. The safety of library members and staff remains our top priority.

For families looking for activities for the kids during the holidays, The Summer Reading Challenge ‘Wild World Heroes’ is also starting this month. Children can visit libraries to collect packs from Monday 12 July. Children can also collect packs and choose books on the day if the library is open for browsing.

Latest details and full opening times.

In the interests of keeping everyone safe, we are still reminding visitors to the library to follow safety precautions, including the wearing of face coverings inside the building and test and trace.

Don’t forget to check out our popular e-service. The virtual Reading Library boasts a huge range of instant access to free online resources, including eBooks, eMagazines and eAudio. New library members can register instantly online and there are lots of free online learning resources. Over the past year, we have had 2,623 people join the service and we’ve issued a staggering 65,000 eResources! We also have very lively social media channels that are very worthy of following on Twitter and Facebook.