Five 24-hour self-service libraries were put into service in Taicang of Jiangsu province on Jan 1 to provide services including application for library cards, book borrowing, returning and renewing.

The five libraries are located in the city's Mingren Guan Square, Jinse Jiangnan residential area, Matai shopping plaza, Taoyuan agricultural product market and Garden Hotel.

The library has what looks like an ATM on the right, with which readers can apply for library cards or borrow, return and renew books. Readers can put their ID cards in the machine's sensing area to automatically identify the card information. The application also requires 100 yuan ($16.25) as a deposit. Then readers can retrieve books by swiping a library card, choose "borrow book" and input four numbers corresponding to their desired book. The whole process only takes several minutes.

Five 24-hour self-service libraries go into operation in Taicang, Jiangsu province, on Jan 1, 2015. [Photo/ epaper.subaonet.com]