The library lending platform, promoted by the Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the autonomous communities, has lent more than 18 million books of all genres, audiobooks, comics and magazines in this decade.
eBiblio, the online library lending platform promoted by the Ministry of Culture in collaboration with autonomous communities, is celebrating its first decade of existence. And it is celebrating this anniversary with record figures in terms of number of users, titles available and loans made. In the last decade, the platform has lent more than 18 million documents, including, in addition to fiction books, essays and children’s and young people’s literature, other formats in great demand by users such as audiobooks, comics and magazines.
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The online public library eBiblio celebrates its 10th anniversary with record numbers of loans and readers
Furthermore, in 2023 the service exceeded the extraordinary figures recorded in 2020 during the period of public library closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Ministry of Culture made an extraordinary purchase of licences to meet the high demand for reading. Last year, eBiblio made a total of 3,503,259 loans, an increase of 25.14% over 2020. The service was used by 171,860 unique users, i.e. readers who borrowed a title or reserved a document.
By the end of the 2023 financial year, eBiblio had made a total of 50,283 different titles and 536,482 e-book and audiobook licences available to its users. Including magazines and newspapers, a total of 562,509 licences. Last year, the Ministry of Culture invested more than 2.5 million euros in eBiblio, including the purchase of licences, magazine subscriptions and the renewal of the platform.
As in previous years, the documents most borrowed from eBiblio continue to be electronic books, which account for almost 50% of the total. Likewise, the number of newspaper loans (29% more than in 2022) and audiobooks (38% more), a type of document that is increasingly in demand among readers, have increased considerably compared to the previous year.
A new look
To celebrate this tenth anniversary, the Directorate General for Books, Comics and Reading of the Ministry of Culture, through the Subdirectorate General for Library Coordination, has commissioned the illustrator Sandra Rilova to create a new graphic image for the service. Based on this, a digital marketing campaign, a redesign of the website and a mass mailing of posters to Spanish public libraries have been launched.
About eBiblio
eBiblio is a free online lending service for digital content (e-books, audiobooks, newspapers and magazines) from most of Spain’s public libraries. The service’s platform also allows access to other types of digital content such as films and databases.
Promoted by the Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the autonomous communities and cities (except the Basque Country and Catalonia, which have their digital lending projects), it provides citizens with an electronic document lending service through the autonomous public library systems that participate in the project. To use the service, all you need is a user card from one of the participating public libraries.
The service is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, through the Internet and offers the reading and use of its contents in streaming or via download. It is also available for mobile devices through free reading apps available on the App Store and Google Play.