From January 2025, Suffolk Libraries will no longer be buying physical newspapers for libraries.
Increasing financial pressures, coupled with the rising cost of newspapers means that providing daily and weekly newspapers in all our 45 libraries has become unsustainable. This is also coupled with the fact that the way people access news and information has changed in recent years and far fewer people are solely reliant on physical newspapers.
Suffolk Libraries has already scaled back on the number of newspaper titles in each library but the increases in price have meant this hasn’t created any actual saving.
Most newspapers have a particular political or ideological bias or leaning, and as a publicly funded service, Suffolk Libraries needs to provide balance. This means that if we have any, we need to have multiple titles, which we cannot afford.
We know a small number of customers will be inconvenienced by this decision and we apologise to those affected but in these challenging times we have to make some difficult decisions about the best use of our resources.
Suffolk Libraries continues to provide free access to a comprehensive range of national newspapers in digital form through our PressReader service and there are detailed guidelines on how to access this on our website.
