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With 50 places, we have trained up our Branch Librarians and are now moving on to our library officers. All new staff undertake Playing your part in the library welcome as part of their induction and feedback to date has been that the course is well received and easy to manage. We appreciate having three administrators able to see the Dashboard as they all play a different role in our training. One of our senior managers has now embarked on a manager's course.
LIBRARY TRAINING · SINCE 1990
Better libraries are made by better-trained staff
4000+ library staff across 270 library services have taken our most recent suite of online courses - from Dublin to Geelong. Online courses for frontline assistants, librarians, and managers, designed by the team that wrote the book on reader-centred libraries. 4000+ library staff across 270 library services have taken our most recent suite of online courses.
CILIP
Supplier Partner 2026
- 4,000+ staff trained
- 270 library services
- 51 countries
- 36 years in libraries
FEATURED COURSES
Most popular courses
Playing your part in the library welcome
A fast, practical and enjoyable course in active customer-care skills, specific to libraries.
£25 / place
Merchandising the bookshelves
Adapt retail techniques to boost performance and help readers make new discoveries.
£50 / place
Creating powerful promotions
This course will give your library displays some new bite!
£50 / place
Putting readers first
Understanding what readers need is the basis for a fresh approach to connecting with your customers.
£50 / place
BY LIBRARY TYPE
Browse training for your service
Courses are written for the realities of each setting - public, college, school, community.
Public Library Training
Practical online training for all levels of library staff from the front door welcome to strategic planning.
College Library Training
Specialised training courses to strengthen your college library’s role in student success.
Secondary School Library Training
Online courses for secondary school library staff on creating welcoming libraries and engaging students in reading.
Community Reading Facilitators
Discover how to bring the wellbeing benefits of reading for pleasure into the communities you work with.
OUR METHOD
Not tickbox training
Our courses don't sit in a separate folder marked "training." They embed into the everyday routines of running a library - what you say to a reader at the desk, how you arrange a promotion, when you intervene and when you step back.
Designed by Rachel Van Riel and the Opening the Book team - pioneers of reader-centred library design. We've trained library staff in 51 countries - starting with face-to-face training in national rollouts and moving online twenty years ago to reach more staff in their place of work.
About Opening the Book →MEASURABLE IMPACT
From a 3-year evaluation programme of 140 staff at Liverpool Libraries, UK
96%
felt more confident talking to readers
felt more confident talking to readers
99%
understood how to target an audience for a book promotion
understood how to target an audience for a book promotion
98%
were confident to create and run a promotion in their library
were confident to create and run a promotion in their library
FROM LIBRARY MANAGERS
What library managers tell us
We are a small library service with four libraries and one mobile library; our staff are all part-time, no-one is more than 20 hours per week. Our first take up of the lowest-cost course was a trial, to see where it was pitched, and now we offer this as induction to staff who are new to libraries or have less than two years' experience working in a library. The mid-cost courses are offered to staff with some working experience.
Recently we have moved to Shared Services with Council administration staff which means new staff do not necessarily have library qualifications such as the longer-term employees. This causes me concern, but a course like this can give employees with no library background a bit of an idea on what we are trying to achieve. It creates food for thought, especially for people new to the job.