Vienna's public library raises cash with erotica hotline

This isn't the typical whispering you might expect to hear at a library.

Vienna's City Hall has launched a “sex hotline” to raise money for the capital's main public library, officials said Tuesday.

It's unusual, but it's not particularly raunchy: Callers pay the equivalent of 53 cents (U.S.) a minute to listen to an actress read breathless passages from erotica dating to the Victorian era.

City Hall set up the hotline earlier this month to help the library raise cash for planned remodelling and expansion, Austrian media reported.

Anne Bennent, a famous Austrian stage and film star, reads passages from the Vienna library's collection of 1,200 works of erotic fiction from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, the library said.

Officials said the hotline would be operational through May 31.