Paddington Library

Large, quiet with very friendly and helpful staff.
Automatic checkouts and returns are very effective and really speed things up.
Quite a large travel section. Food section is smaller. Good range of fiction titles.
They will get you books from other Westminster libraries if you request, but there is a holding fee.
The online renewal system is extremely handy

This is the Library from which I get most of the books I read since I live in London. Although the choice of titles is fairly big to be a local library, quite often I’ve had to place a hold for a book I’m interested in, to have it delivered from another Westminster library. It’s a good and useful service but you have to pay 50p for each hold and the online system is so confusing that you can place a hold twice without noticing, and end up having to pay £1.
I don’t recommend going to the this library to read there or to study. The study area is very small and almost always full of people. Unless you go just before opening, it’s very likely that you can’t find any place to sit. Also, there is only one toilet in the whole library, so in the afternoon it’s not in an optimal condition. When I’ve been there, I rather went to the public toilets nearby, in Queensway.
Summing up, it’s a good place to loan books and take them home but not the best place to spend more than half an hour reading and relaxing.

My life in the last few months hasn’t been particularly action-​packed. As a result I’ve become a regular visitor to the library. Paddington Library is my local library, though as a library member you can use all the libraries that are within the borough.
It is quite a small library, arranged over two floors. The top floor has fiction, some computers, comics and DVDs. The basement floor has more computers, desks, and a diverse, but limited, range of books of other genres. I mostly use the fiction section. It seems to cover most of the classics and key works of significant authors. The DVD section is similarly small but it has a good foreign shelf.
Additionally, whilst library staff are generally not famed for their charm the people here are alright.