The Ministry of Culture has undertaken to evaluate the digital offer proposed by public reading libraries.

Of the 2,014 municipal, inter-communal or departmental libraries that responded to a survey, 514 said they offer digital resources.

The larger a library is, the more digital resources it offers

On average, 2.3 staff members are in charge of digital resources (3.9 on average for libraries with 20,000 inhabitants or more), for various functions depending on the library: support, access management or acquisitions.

The budget for digital resources increased by 5% between 2020 and 2021: and by 9% in libraries serving more than 20,000 people.

Reading materials for users

Self-study content (79%), press (78%) and videos (72%) are the most popular resources, as well as music (64%), digital books (63%) and audio books (50%).

77% of libraries offer reading material to their users, with the provision of computers (68%), tablets (34%) or e-readers (31%).

Of the materials made available and available for borrowing (42%), a large proportion is preloaded with content (78%).

Digital books make up the vast majority of pre-loaded content (92%), followed by video games (23%), audio books (20%), newspapers (10%), etc.

For libraries in large communities, digital resources account for an average of 22% of the library budget (and 20% for departmental libraries).

Digital resources shared between libraries

The provision of resources within a network (inter-communal, departmental, etc.) is most often free (78%), unlike the provision of resources outside the network.

A quarter of libraries that do not offer digital resources intend to do so in the future.

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