MORE than 48,000 books are missing from the shelves of East Lancashire’s libraries.


A Freedom of Information request has revealed thousands of items have been missing for more than six months.

They include fiction and non-fiction books, music scores and reference titles with children’s books making up almost half.


Library staff said best sellers and novels adapted into film are most likely to be mislaid, as well as books by popular authors including James Patterson, Danielle Steel and JK Rowling.


The figures shows more than 15,000 adult non-fiction books are missing, with around 4,500 from Burnley library alone.

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More than 7,600 adult fiction books have not been brought back, with Burnley and Accrington libraries having the most missing, 1,625 and 1,488 respectively.


There was almost 22,000 children’s fiction books missing across the county, with the almost 2,900 missing in Accrington. Figures were not available for libraries run by Blackburn with Darwen Council.


County Hall bosses said they do what they can to make it easy for people to return and renew items they have loaned from libraries.


Katherine Walsh, Accrington library manager, said: “The usual books to leave the shelves straight away are James Patterson, Danielle Steel and JK Rowling novels.


“Because they are borrowed a lot the chance of them going missing is higher.


“A whole array of different books can go missing though, including non-fiction and science-fiction. Our regular customers tend to bring books back very quickly and very rarely overdue.


“People who don’t come in regularly tend to bring books back late.


“Television and films can have a big impact on which books are taken out.


“The release of the film, ‘Fantastic Beasts and where to find them’ in the summer for example, saw people take out the book version or visit the Harry Potter series again.


“It was the same with Roald Dahl and the BFG film in the summer, lots of his books were taken out because of the hype around the film.”


Around 240 copies of music scores were also not returned, with 48 reference books reported missing.


The county council closed several libraries earlier this year as part of a £262million budget reduction initiative.


Community groups campaigned tirelessly to keep their libraries open.


Crawshawbooth and Oswaldtwistle libraries are set to be taken over by volunteers. In total, almost £20,000 is owed by library users in hire charges, loan fines and reservation charges.


Cllr Gordon Birtwistle, leader of the Liberal Democrats on Burnley Council, said libraries could have been kept open if the books were brought back and fines paid off.


He said: “It’s basically theft. There’s tens of thousands of books that are not on our libraries shelves that are inaccessible to the public.


“I get several people regularly telling me how annoyed they are with the Burnley campus library in Barden Lane closing, but money from the fines could have made the difference in keeping that open.


“There’s also the question of how much would it cost to replace all those books. Some specialist books can cost £20 or £30, so the total bill would run into the hundreds of thousands.”


Items from libraries can be loaned out for around three weeks before they have to be brought back or renewed.

People who do not bring their books, CDs and DVDs back in time are subject to fines, which can vary depending on the item.


Christopher Brindle, chair of the Oswaldtwistle Lamp group, which is set to take over the town’s library, said: “We have seen how important it is to keep libraries open and we have fought long and hard for ours.


“I hope the perception of libraries will change and people will take more notice of their local library and if they have a book that’s long over due bring it back.”


Steve Lloyd, County Council libraries manager, said the county council’s system of fines and charges is in place to encourage people to return items on time.

He said: “The number of books which aren’t returned is tiny compared with the more than four million items issued across the county every year.”