Overview

The municipal library in a few words

• The Lausanne Municipal Library has approximately 445,000 books in its collection, including 310,000 available to the general public.
• Its collections of art, cooking, esoteric, travel, detective and comic books are particularly rich.
• In the reading room, you can read newspapers and magazines (approximately 250 titles) or consult a variety of dictionaries and encyclopaedias. You can borrow magazines, except for the most recent issue.
• At its three branches and in its bookmobile, you can find material for both adults and children.
• Most titles can be borrowed, and some of the rarer publications are available for consultation by request.The librarians are happy to provide you with information or advice

The municipal library is...

Central Library in Chauderon

An adult section for ages 15 and up, with:

• 40,000 comic strips and more than 10,000 titles. 600 works and a set of magazines and reference items available for borrowing or consulting;
• Documents and 20,000 detective stories available for borrowing;
• 10,000 science fiction and fantasy novels;
• 8,000 books devoted to esoteric and new age topics;
• a collection of general and popular literature;
• reference items on many subjects: food, theatre, travel (guides and maps), photography, politics, applied arts, various fields, computers, etc.;
• LARGE PRINT books;
• bibliographical references about publications, collections and 15,000 book covers from 1930 to 1990, plus 40,000 news clippings about writers and their works.
   

Children’s Library on Avenue d'Echallens

For children up to the age of 15, with:

• 10,000 books for young children, including board books;
• Early reading;
• 2,000 foreign language books (English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Serbo-Croatian and Albanian);
• thousands of novels representing all genres;
• comic strips;
• magazines.
   

And in the districts of the city

Three branches:

• Entre-Bois
  Reference items (news clippings relating to classical and contemporary authors – biographies and criticisms);
• Montriond;
• Grand-Vennes.
   

Also, a bookmobile that serves the entire city, with fixed appointments in 22 districts, weekly or twice a month.

Some history

The Lausanne Municipal Library, founded in 1934, along with its children’s library (1945), its bookmobile (1964) and its branches (starting in 1968), is a library for the general public. It is not a professional library. (The city already has a university library, technical libraries, corporate libraries and school libraries.)

Still, a large part of its energy is devoted to educational and professional needs. It is becoming less involved with conservation (which is the role of the cantonal and national libraries), but it does conserve a few general collections (comic strips, detective stories, love stories, children’s books, etc.).

It is becoming increasingly more current, and always popular. In all of the subject areas, it offers the most representative and agreeable summaries, essays, reports and fictional works, particularly in its esoteric collection or its rich assortment of books offering an introduction to science.