Where do libraries loan out the most books ? Interestingly, there are actually statistics about the number of books loaned every year in major cities around the world. They are compiled by the World Cities Culture Forum and the following infographic provides an overview of the cities loaning out the most books. The Tokyo Metropolitan Library reported that readers in the Japanese capital checked out nearly 112 million books in 2017. Shanghai had the second highest volume with 86 million books (in 2016).