She added it was important to make sure everyone had “free and easy access” to books.
The service said it currently had 15,000 overdue items, which were mostly books, and they included things that were only a few days late as well as items that were long overdue.
These account for less than 1% of the service’s annual loans, with between 1.6 and 1.7 million items typically borrowed each year.
People were unable to use their library cards when they built up “significant fines” for overdue or lost books, the service said.
The National Year of Reading is an initiative by the Department for Education and National Literacy Trust to tackle a decline in reading.