Report From The Netherlands: “The Dutch Borrow Over Five Million E-Books Every Year” as Bibliotheek Turns 10

From NL Times:

Exactly ten years ago this Sunday, the then Minister of Culture Jet Bussemaker officially lent out the first e-book via the public libraries’ special online platform, the so-called online Bibliotheek (online library). It was Vaslav, the novel by Arthur Japin about the life of the legendary ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky (1890-1950).

In the first year (2014), around 80,000 people borrowed a total of almost 810,000 digital books in this way. There are now more than 600,000 people who borrow books through the online library every year: a total of more than five million e-books and around two million audiobooks. The increase is partly due to the COVID‑19 restrictions.

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“We were the first online library in Europe where e-books could be borrowed by more than one user at a time,” recalls Ronald Huizer, member of the KB Board of Directors. The system is now well established. “In the years before the coronavirus, between three and four million e-books were borrowed every year. After that, it was consistently more than five million.” According to Huizer, the special ThuisBieb app from 2020, which allows non-members to receive 100 e-books and audiobooks free of charge, has contributed to the growth.

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