What you can borrow
Find out about our borrowing options and the types of books schools can borrow to support teaching and learning, and reading for pleasure.
Our borrowing options
This page explains our options for schools.
If you're a home educator, read What home educators can borrow.
Options for schools
National Library's borrowing options give you flexibility about when and how you can borrow books to support inquiry learning and reading engagement in your school.
Topics selection requests — ask our expert librarians to select the best books for your students based on what you tell us about your topic or inquiry and your students' needs.
Extra reading requests — once a term, ask us to select extra books to engage students with reading.
Specific title requests — choose and request specific books from our lending collections.
We encourage schools to use topics selection and extra reading requests as their main way of borrowing books from us.
Read about our additional offers for small schools
What home educators can borrow
Topics selection requests
Each term, school loan coordinators can use our online lending form to send us a number of requests for books to inspire and inform your students’ inquiry and develop their love of reading.
In each request, you tell us information such as:
what you need books for (i.e. learning area or reading, curriculum topic)
your students' reading ages and year levels
the number of books you'd like.
You can also use a topics selection request to order up to 5 copies of a fiction title for social reading.
Read about the benefits of social reading
Our librarians use the information you provide in your request to guide their selection of books for your loan. They aim to give you a rich variety of formats and genres that:
will engage your students
make the most of your school's total allocation.
Number of requests depends on your school's allocation
The number of topics selection requests your school can make and how many books you can have depends on your school roll. This is called your school topics selection allocation.
School topics selection allocation according to roll size
School roll size | Number of topics requests per term | Maximum number of books per term |
|---|---|---|
0–99 | 9 | 132 |
100–149 | 10 | 164 |
150–249 | 11 | 244 |
250–349 | 12 | 280 |
350–449 | 13 | 334 |
450–549 | 14 | 373 |
550–649 | 15 | 401 |
650–749 | 16 | 427 |
750–849 | 17 | 447 |
850–949 | 18 | 449 |
950–1049 | 19 | 454 |
1050–3500 | 20 | 468 |
Extra reading requests
Once a term, you can also request extra books to encourage reading for pleasure. These requests give schools even more books — up to 100 titles over and above your topics selection allocation.
Our librarians will choose great books to match your school profile (for example, primary or secondary, co-educational or single-sex) and the reading age that you may specify. You can ask them to select 25, 50, 75, or 100 books to send to your school.
Specific title requests
Use this borrowing option when you need to request specific books to support individual students or small groups.
There are no restrictions on the number of specific title requests you can make or when you can make them.
We're unable to provide class sets of an individual title. Use a topics selection request if you want to order more than 1 copy of a fiction book for social reading.
When to request and return books
You need to send us topics selection and extra reading requests during each term's loan request period to make sure books arrive when you require them. You can request specific titles anytime.
Books are generally due back to us at the end of the school term you borrowed them for.
Dates to request or return books
Types of books, collections you can borrow from
We have books suitable for students at every year level — from year 0 to year 13. Our school lending collections offer a wide range of fiction and non-fiction books for different reading ages, home languages, and reading needs.
Books in our lending collections for schools
Request books now
Request early! Demand will affect the availability of books for loans. For example, Treaty of Waitangi resources are in high demand in the period leading up to Waitangi Day.
The earlier school loan coordinators request books, the more likely you are to receive them, especially for high-demand topics.
Quick guide — gives an overview of how to use our service.
Any questions or need help?
Phone 0800 LIB LINE 0800 542 5463 Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm.