Newcastle's state of the art City Library has drawn the crowds since its first day open to the public. Her Majesty The Queen officially opened the library, named after North East composer Charles Avison, last November but the building has been open to the public since June 2009. 

Built on the site of the former City Library the six-floor building includes a 185-seat performance space, meeting rooms and crèche facilities. And at a time when libraries locally and nationally are experiencing a surge in numbers of visitors, Newcastle City Council's ground-breaking approach aims to capitalise on this renewed interest by transforming the way library services are delivered.  

The library is fully self-service, allowing staff more time to give help and advice to customers. The RFID equipment in the City libraries consists of five Jupiter SelfChecks with smartcard readers and Coin Payment, Staff stations, gates and a BookReturn with a 7 bin sorter, two internal SelfReturns and one outside the building available 24/7/365. An additional service is a 24-hour library vending machine which also opens on to the street and holds up to 400 books, CDs and DVDs. 

High Heaton Library, Gosforth Library, Fawdon Library, West End Library are also well equipped with Bibliotheca Self Service systems. 

David Fay, City Libraries Manager: The Bibliotheca equipment is well proven at our City Library for self-service and 24/7 operation. We have recently extended Bibliotheca self-service in Fenham Library which will mean that Fenham benefits from the same technology as City Library and it is easier than ever to use the library. 

More at www.newcastle.gov.uk/core.nsf/a/librariesnewcitylibrary.