About this Site

What is the Virtual Library?	How the Virtual Library Works
The Future of the Virtual Library	Accessibility Policy of the Virtual Library

What is the Virtual Library?

The Virtual Library is the 6th library in Bedford Borough and 13th Library in Central Bedfordshire, open 22 hours a day , seven days a week. It aims to provide the same services online as you would find in any of our physical libraries, and the same levels of customer care.

The Virtual Library provides you with access to:

The online library catalogue and borrower information, enabling you to search, request and renew items
Information about Bedford Borough and Central Bedfordshire Libraries
Specialist pages for local and family historians, as well as helpful hints to aid your research
Books, music and film news, and the opportunity to read reviews and contribute your own.
The children and teen's virtual library - homework help, recommended reads and lots of fun things to do
WebLinks - recommended web sites, which are safe, reliable and regularly updated
Local Information - whether it is a local organisation, club or society, this should be your first stop
Jobs, Careers and Skills - online and in the library, as well as advice and guidance on where to go to start or develop your learning
Plus lots, lots, lots more...

Plus you are able to use our online enquiry service to ask questions and send comments to the professional librarians in the libraries, just click the Contact Us button to get in touch.

The Future of the Virtual Library

The Virtual Library will continue to develop and grow in response to changes in the service and your comments.

There is an ongoing programme of evaluation, if you wish to join a focus group or send in your views, comments and suggestions please use the Contact Us form.

How the Virtual Library Works

The Virtual Library has been separated into sections representing areas of our service. Move your mouse over a heading on the navigation bar to prompt a flyout list of headings. These will appear whenever you move the mouse over the navigation, so allowing you to move around the site with ease.

All links are in blue, or purple once they have been clicked, click these to access another page in the Virtual Library or to go to an external web site.

You can search the Virtual Library, using the search box on the right hand corner of the screen, and clicking the magnifier image. This will search the whole of the Virtual Library. If you would like to limit your search to a specific area use the options on your results page. The results are ranked by the number of times your search term/ keywords appear, with the most matches at the top. To access the page click on the Title line, which is blue.

Accessibility Policy of the Virtual Library

The Virtual Library aims to be accessible to all areas of the community. This area will continue to develop over time, please let us know if there are changes you would like to see.

We are guided by a number of standards and laws:

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and their Accessibility Initiative.
http://www.w3.org/WAI/
Disability Discrimination Act and the revised Code of Practice
www.drc-gb.org/thelaw/thedda.asp
The Virtual Library Pages have been passed through various validators for accessibility.

If you encounter any problems with the Virtual Library, please do let us know by completing the Contact Us form.

Page last updated: 6th March 2014