Anyone who lives, works, or studies in Hampshire can join the library for free. Membership brings a host of benefits, including access to a collection of over 3 million physical items, an extensive digital library and free use of public computers in libraries.
We have recently reviewed our terms of membership to ensure our offer is clear, consistent, and fair. Following this review, we will be making some changes to the terms of membership. From Monday 3 July the changes will be automatically applied to your account if you are already a member of the library service.
From Monday 3 July the following changes will be implemented:
- All individual members will be able to borrow a maximum of 20 physical items.
- All individual members will be able to reserve a maximum of 20 physical items.
- All individual members will be able to borrow physical items for an initial loan period of four weeks. To avoid charges items must be returned or renewed after this time.
Home Library Service customers will be able to borrow a maximum of 60 items for an initial loan period of six weeks. More information can be found here.
From Tuesday 1 August we will also be updating some of our fees and charges.
- The reservation charge for over-18 members will increase to £1.20 per item and the overdue charge will increase to 30p per item per day. No changes have been made to the costs of reservations or overdue charges for under-18 members.
- The Spoken Word membership will increase from £30 to £40 per year, but the reservation charge has been removed from this membership.
There are no charges for reservations or overdue items for our concession members or Home Library Service members. If you feel you could benefit from a concession membership this can be set up for you at any of our libraries.
Other changes:
From Monday 3 July we will ask new library members to provide a date of birth when joining the library. This information can help us with future planning and reporting.
We also ask that anyone joining the library provide us with an email address, if they have one. If you provide an email address, we can keep you informed about your library account and help you manage it online – to avoid unnecessary fees or charges.
Anyone under the age of 16 will be asked to complete an updated permission form to use a public computer in a library. Please ask a member of staff at your local library.
Your individual membership will be valid for three years. Every three years we will ask you to ‘re-register’ your membership account. This is easy to do online and helps ensure the information we hold is correct.