WHAT'S THE STORY WITH THE POPULARITY OF OUR LIBRARIES?:

FREE BOOKS, free web access, free DVDs, free Wi-Fi, free self-improving talks, free readings, free newspapers, free magazines and free book clubs – there’s so much free stuff going on in the State’s 387 libraries that it is little wonder membership has increased significantly in recent months as the nation has grown collectively more frugal.

According to Brendan Teeling of the Library Council of Ireland, the membership surge has come in two waves.

The first was noticed by branches across the country last year and it came from newly price-sensitive people who had suddenly seen the wisdom in borrowing rather than buying their books. The type of books that were being borrowed started changing too and those that offered advice on how to budget began appearing at check-out desks with increasing frequency.

Now, with dole queues lengthening and jobs as hard to find as an equitable euro-sterling exchange rate in an Irish supermarket, the reasons people are joining and using the services on offer in their local libraries have changed as well, Teeling says.

More people are coming in to use computer facilities – some 97 per cent of the State’s libraries offer free internet access – to look for and apply for jobs. “People are also joining simply because they now have less money and more time on their hands,” he believes.

The books being borrowed have shifted, again with the budget books now competing with self-help books for readers’ attention, although both are overshadowed by the demand for the popular fiction of Marian Keyes, Cecelia Ahern and Maeve Binchy, who all routinely feature in the top 10 most borrowed books in Ireland’s libraries.

The most popular library book at present is neither top tips or chick-lit but the Official Driver Theory Book, in itself a perfect illustration of the wisdom of using the library. It sells for a ridiculous €30 but is only used for a very short period of time before being discarded for ever.

Many people in their 20s, 30s and 40s who have not set foot inside a library since Aunt Fanny was still to be frequently found dispensing lashings and lashings of ginger beer are shocked by how much has changed since they went away.

“When people do come back, typically when they have children of their own, they are surprised at what is on offer,” Teeling says. There’s storytelling and promotions and book clubs and free Wi-Fi access in brightly lit, airy buildings.

THE QUALITY AND RANGEof books on offer will also surprise people, he maintains. "We have the latest bestsellers, but the beauty of the library is the size of the catalogue and the fact that it goes so far back. We do try to have a balance between the classics and the latest releases.

“It will probably change with the cutbacks, but in recent years the money available to buy new books has increased hugely,” he says.

Over the last decade, as part of the Branching Out government investment programme, the expenditure on library services has increased by 157 per cent while spending on stock has gone up by 170 per cent, from €5,477,514 to €14,814,499, just over 10 per cent of the total spend last year of €130.5 million.

In these recessionary times, libraries will be an outlet for many people who will find themselves isolated by unemployment. “It is a social activity and there are no barriers to it,” Teeling says. “If you want to go in and sit there all day, then no one is ever going to question what you are doing.”

One of the most social and increasingly popular services being provided are book clubs. The libraries provide the space as well as the books and also co-ordinate their efforts to ensure sufficient copies of a particular book have been brought in from neighbouring libraries to cater for everyone involved.

READING COSTS MONEY. A newly released paperback could set you back as much as €15, while a hardback could be at least twice that amount. So by ploughing through just five paperbacks a month and a single hardback, keen readers could spend more than €1,200 a year on books, most of which they will only read once.

For all their merits, it would, however, be a mistake to think libraries were the only place where remarkable value is to be found when it comes to reading matter. The web has come up with a range of money-saving solutions, including www.bookswap.ie, which does pretty much as it says by offering complete strangers the opportunity to swap books. You register with the site, list the books you want to swap and then go looking at what the site has to offer. When you find a book you want, you contact the member through the site and arrange the swap.

It has more than 2,000 books on its, er, books, which might sound like a lot but compares poorly to similar UK and US sites, which have hundreds of thousands of titles available. Unfortunately, most of these sites are not open to Irish readers.

Bookswap was set up just over a year ago by Martin Gormley, a Scottish IT programmer who has been living in Ireland for 10 years. He decided to act after growing resentful about having to fork out so much so often for books. It has more of a hobby than anything else and has been a slow-burner over the past 12 months. He has seen the number of people signing up “growing steadily” in recent weeks. “If you can’t find a book to swap, there are other things that you can do: post it for free, ask the other person to pay postage, or simply say no,” he says.

He says there are around 400 core users who are typically swapping a book a month. “I believe this is the kind of thing that could really take off during the recession.”

The cost of posting a paperback is around €3, he says and while he accepts that it might be “a pain” to find an envelope, a stamp and then post a book, “if you’re saving a tenner every time you do it, then it certainly is a great idea”.

If the library, or even swapping books, is a little old-fashioned for your tastes, you could try something a little cooler but equally free. Pick one of your favourite books and register with the website www.bookcrossing.com, a free online bookclub that spans the globe. It has more than 300,000 members, sharing more than 1.5 million books.

When you register, you get an ID number and the website address, which you stick on the book and give it to a friend or leave it where someone is likely to pick it up and read it. Don’t just dump it on the street though – there’s a fine line between sharing and littering.

On the website you can track the presence of your book and, importantly, get tips as to the location of other books which like-minded people have left about the place.

The site is updated every 20 minutes and at the time of writing there were dozens of free books up for grabs around the country. We tracked one down in the Winding Stair bookshop in Dublin (although be careful you don’t inadvertently get caught shoplifting if you go looking there). Another three books had been left by the site’s users in the GPO, and eight books had been left for others to find in St James’s Hospital.