“Incredible service, lifesaver, a highlight of my week, a lifeline and valuable service”

These are just some of the ways residents have described Lincolnshire County Council’s library service during the pandemic.

During last week’s Public Protection and Communities scrutiny committee, residents’ feedback was shared on how the library service, delivered by Greenwich Leisure Ltd (GLL), has worked over the past year.

Louise Egan from the library services, explains: “Despite the challenges of the pandemic, we’ve maintained delivery and made significant improvements to the library service.

“We’ve supported our communities through digital engagement and phone calls, activities over social media and videos.  We’ve also enhanced our online platform offering eNewspapers from over 100 countries in 60 languages.

“We’ve continued to make deliveries to the vulnerable, and provided early years’ books for families with new-born babies and pre-school children.”

“Since reopening, we’ve returned to our browsing offer and gradually over the coming months we will be reintroducing our full range of services.

Cllr Lindsey Cawrey, executive member for culture and heritage at Lincolnshire County Council, added: “Our library service is truly amazing. It is a real example of brilliance and power of local government responding to covid, shown by how fast they responded, changed and improved to make sure essential services were provided – so no one was left behind or suffered from social isolation. The team went consistently over and above and were a real lifeline to many. The feedback just shows how important this service is to the community.”

Feedback from customers includes:

“Just to say thank you for picking some booked for me, you didn’t have to! I would have been lost over Xmas without you. Thank you.”

“Thank you for keeping open, handing out long tales and help preserve what sanity I have left in these strange times.”

“I would like to congratulate the library staff from the excellent service I have received with books being delivered to my front door. It is a credit to you all you are still looking after members of the library and my thanks is really not high enough praise.”

“Your calls are one of my weekly highlights, its so nice to have a natter about books.”

“Lifesaver, or at least mental health saver during these terrible times.”

For more information on the discussions, visit

https://lincolnshire.moderngov.co.uk/documents/s41172/7.0%20Performance%20of%20the%20Library%20Services%20Contract%20Year%20Five%20Review%20Report.pdf.