Hertfordshire Libraries is 100

Hertfordshire Libraries Service is 100!

We were thrilled to share 100 years of Hertfordshire Libraries from February 2025 – March 2026. Thank you to everyone who joined the celebrations and made the year so special!

28 February 2025 marked 100 years since a countywide library service opened.

Whether you're a regular library visitor, a user of our many online resources, or someone who hasn’t thought about a library in a long time, we invite you to discover more about what our modern library service has to offer. See how we celebrated throughout the centenary.

Events for adults

Across the centenary, we held over 100 events spanning author visits, comedy shows, music performances, art workshops and even a silent disco.

Celebrations officially closed on 27 February 2026 with a special visit from Lee Child to Hitchin and St Albans libraries.

We will be planning plenty of events for the year ahead so do sign up to our e-newsletter to be kept updated or check out upcoming events.

100 word poem challenge

Enjoy reading the fantastic poems celebrating libraries, reading and creativity on our blog.

Thank you for all your submissions to the 100 word poetry challenge, we received well over 400 poems from all ages and are delighted to share the winning poems and shortlisted poems.

Herts Big Read

Celebrating books and reading for pleasure continues to be a highlight of our centenary year. From March through to December 2025, we invited you to vote for your favourite of 10 selected titles each month. The final results are now in and the winners are:

March: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman
April: American Dirt, Jeanine Cummins
May: Circe, Madeline Miller
June: The Appeal, Janice Hallett
July: Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
August: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin
September: Yellowface, Rebecca F Kuang
October: The Curfew, T.M. Logan
November: Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus
December: Weyward, Emilia Hart.

Herts Big Read will return in 2026!

Each month brings a new theme packed with exciting books for every kind of reader – launching in April with New Beginnings.

Visit your local library for themed displays and staff picks or join in from anywhere with our eLibrary.

Reminisce with us

We know how much people value looking back at the past and sharing memories. So we're excited to share a 'Through the Decades' short film charting the changes to our library service over 100 years, as well as the threads that have remained the same.

Our thanks to Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant funding for enabling us to host a yearlong Centenary celebration of reading and creativity in Hertfordshire.