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Local Shelf

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An easier way to explore Brighton & Hove Libraries

Local Shelf lets you browse the films, TV, books and audiobooks you can borrow from the city's libraries. It's a free, unofficial community project.

  • Browse like a streaming app

  • See what's on the shelf

  • Borrow from the library

Choose my libraryMore about Local Shelf

About Local Shelf

Brighton & Hove libraries lend thousands of films, books and audiobooks, but their catalogue is built for librarians, not for browsing on the sofa. Local Shelf is a community-made shop window for the collection.

  • ExploreFilms & TV, books and audiobooks, with covers, genres, trailers and ratings.
  • Check the shelfSee which library has a copy in right now, or set your own library.
  • Borrow from the libraryReserve or borrow on the library's own site with your library card.

It's unofficial and not affiliated with Brighton & Hove City Council. Nothing here replaces the library: reservations, loans, renewals and fees all happen on the library catalogue.

What's in here

  • Films & TV: all 1,610 DVDs and Blu-rays, with live shelf checks, plus IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes links where we can match them.
  • Books: the 2,100 newest additions across adult, young adult and children's fiction and non-fiction.
  • Audiobooks: the 1,500 newest CD audiobooks and eAudiobooks.

The full book and audiobook collections are far too big to mirror politely, so browsing shows what's new. Searching still covers everything: we ask the library's catalogue live and show the results alongside.

How to borrow

  1. Find something you fancy. “On the shelf now” and the library filter show what's in at your branch.
  2. Pop into that library and grab it, or hit Reserve at the library to place a hold on the library's own site (you'll need your library card).
  3. eAudiobooks are borrowed through the BorrowBox or Libby apps with your library card.
  4. Not a member? Join online. It's free.

Accessibility & settings

You can switch between dark and light themes, turn on the Kids profile, choose bigger or smaller covers, make the text bigger, switch to high contrast, use an extra-readable typeface, turn off animations, and pick your local library so we only show what's there. Open settings.

  • Everything works with a keyboard. Press Tab to move, Enter to open, Escape to close.
  • There's a “Skip to main content” link at the very top of each page.
  • We follow your device's reduced-motion setting automatically.
  • Settings and My List are stored in your browser only. There are no accounts or cookies. We count page views anonymously with Vercel Web Analytics, which doesn't identify you.

Spotted something that's hard to use? We'd love to fix it.

Supporting Local Shelf

Local Shelf is a free, not-for-profit community project. Donations through Ko-fi cover hosting and running costs. They don't go to Brighton & Hove Libraries or the council. If you'd rather help the library itself, borrowing, joining and reserving all count.

Donate

Where the data comes from

Once a day we read listings from the public library catalogue, gently and only from the pages it allows robots to visit (plus one search per collection to list what's there). Each title page checks the shelves live when you open it, and book and audiobook searches are passed on to the library's catalogue, cached and capped so we never put much load on it. Covers come from the library's own cover service. Film links and critics' scores come from Wikidata.

Film posters and trailers from TMDB. This product uses TMDB and the TMDB APIs but is not endorsed, certified, or otherwise approved by TMDB.

Catalogue last refreshed 2 November 2026 at 12:41.

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