HAMPSHIRE is a county of budding scientists, celebrity-watchers and amateur photographers, judging from the most popular e-magazine downloads available from local libraries.

New Scientist, Hello! and Amateur Photographer are top of the list of the most downloaded e-magazines, according to Hampshire Library Service, which has 125 titles on offer.

These cover a broad range of interests, and once downloaded, they never expire. Other popular titles include Now, Auto Express, Apple Magazine, House Beautiful and TV Times.

As well as e-magazines, the county council’s library service has a rapidly expanding eBook virtual library, with more than 12,000 eBooks and 3,000 eAudio books available for loan.

Young readers can also browse more than 900 eBooks and eAudio titles for children and teenagers.

A website enables visitors to search the library’s catalogue, view blogs, renew or reserve books, ebooks, CDs or DVDs, join the library, or keep up with all the latest library news.

Customers can access up to five eBooks/eAudio books at a time, free of charge, and can keep them for up to 14 days.

Files then expire and must be deleted, which means that there will never be any overdue fines.

More people are now using this online way of accessing the books they love. In 2013-14, there were about 124,400 downloads, up from 73,906 in 2012-13.

The most popular genres with eLibrary users are crime and thrillers – with romances and autobiographies also popular.

Authors who feature frequently in the top 10 most issued titles include Lee Child, Dan Brown, Stieg Larsson and Suzanne Collins.

Councillor Keith Chapman, Hampshire County Council’s executive member for culture, recreation and countryside, said: “This hi-tech way of reading and listening to books is clearly popular with customers, and shows how the county council is using the technology available to provide a service that meets the evolving, modern day needs of library users.

“Hampshire was one of the first UK library services to offer eBooks and now has one of the largest collections in the country.”

For more information, visit hants.gov.uk/library.