About the School Library Service

Lancashire School Library Service provides library and reading support to early years' settings, primary, special, academy and independent schools. Subscriptions are delivered through a Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Lancashire School Library Service offers a complete range of reading and library services, from resourcing book collections to creating exciting libraries and reading spaces.

Watch our video or read the video transcript to find out more about Lancashire School Library Service.

Hello, and welcome to Lancashire School Library Service. My name's Diane Scarborough and I'm the School Library Service Manager. I'd like to share with you how we support schools across Lancashire with reading and learning.

The School Library Service delivers a range of reading and library support, from resourcing book collections to designing libraries and reading spaces.

Primary and special schools, nurseries, and children's centres can access our services by purchasing an annual subscription.

Our book bus is available to visit every subscribing school and enables teachers to select books for their library and classroom, and for children to discover their favourite reads. Our staff are always on hand to help schools with their book selections.

Our curriculum loans support all aspects of the national curriculum, encourage wider reading, and promote reading for pleasure. Our loans are selected to match pupils' key stages, reading ages and abilities and provide teachers with the very best resources to support a wide and rich curriculum.

To help create a buzz around reading schools can book our popular pupil workshops. Our creative staff deliver exciting sessions to support all key stages and all abilities. The workshops are designed to make reading a positive, fun experience. We love helping schools to develop a love of reading.

Our book awards offer an exciting way to engage pupils with reading and help build a reading culture. The Brilliant Book Award and The Fantastic Book Awards for key stages one and two are popular annual reading events involving thousands of children. Children are introduced to new authors and illustrators and most importantly get to vote for their favourite award-winning stories. They also have the opportunity to meet winning authors and illustrators at our celebration event.

Creating inspiring and engaging school library and book spaces is important to us. Whether it's assisting with the planning and design of a new school library or refurbishment or advice on book stock, organisation and layout, we're there to support with professional and impartial advice and practical help.

If you know a school near you who would like to subscribe or find out more about our service, we'd love to hear from you. To keep up to date with us, visit our website and follow us on Twitter @LancashireSLS we look forward to hearing from you soon.

Why subscribe to Lancashire School Library Service?

We save you money by:

  • offering a cost-effective solution to resourcing your school curriculum, library and reading collections.
  • regularly exchanging your books and ensuring that your school is supplied with up to date, inclusive and high-quality books in excellent physical condition.
  • loaning books to your school at a fraction of the purchase price.
  • delivering to and collecting resources directly from your school at no extra cost at the beginning and end of every term.

We save you time by:  

  • researching and assessing the resources we provide, ensuring they are relevant, up to date and of the highest quality.
  • compiling your project collections for curriculum topics, reading for pleasure and class reading loans leaving staff time to concentrate on teaching.
  • ensuring our team of professional and experienced staff are available to give you advice on all library and resource related issues.
  • supporting you to meet the requirements of The Reading Framework, Department for Education, July 2023.

"The team at the School Library Service continue to provide high-quality resources, delivered with expertise, knowledge, enthusiasm and understanding of literature to help us grow our whole school reading culture."

Primary English Subject Lead