Contactless Lending

04.06.2021: Now that CEL is re-opening we are scaling back our contactless lending service. Please only pre-order your books if absolutely necessary.


The Corona Virus is making us all think of innovative ways of trying to carry on some semblance of normality. Whilst we are unable to open the Children’s English Library, we are following the lead of some of the local German libraries and offering a contactless lending service.

How it will work…

– e-mail contactless@celstuttgart.de with your name and library card number and some details about what you would like to borrow e.g. 5 books for a 3 year old girl (theme pigs/transport), 5 books for a 7 year old boy(Oxford Reading Tree Stage 4) 2 JF books and 2 CDs plus a game.

This will be a lucky dip style reading experience – you may find that you can persuade your Peppa Pig fan to listen to something else. We are working on getting our online catalogue back up and running and will let you know as soon as it is available.

*Requests must be received by Thursday at midnight for pick-up on Saturday afternoon. The pick-up / drop off time on Saturday will be between 2:00pm -4:00 pm.

If this pickup time is IMPOSSIBLE then please contact us and we will try to find a solution. We no longer have a board member living above the library so a flexible pickup time is no longer possible.

Any requests received after Thursday at midnight will be available the following week.

When your book request has been processed, you will be sent a confirmation email, which will also detail how to get into our new premises.
The front door of the library will be open. You can pick up a bag of books checked out to your account and leave your returns in the return box.
Please keep in mind that this is contactless lending and we cannot offer a tour of our new premises at this time.
We hope to open up again as soon as possible and show you all around.

If you have friends who are members of CEL and don’t have access to a car, you can arrange with them to collect/return books on their behalf.
They should order the books themselves and state who will collect them so that the two bags can be put out together.

We hope that all our members are keeping well, but if your family is in quarantine or has been ill please stay at home and keep your books until you are all better and there is no chance of infection being passed on.

For those who can’t make it into CEL, you can check out our Virtual-Story-Time.

Best wishes,

The CEL Board