Upper Hutt Library Changes

Jan from Ebdentown

Thanks to everyone for their feedback it is very much appreciated.
Your voices are critically important. If we don’t speak out our policy makers will say that we don’t mind or we don’t care. If you have any ideas on how we can be better heard by Council I would love to hear them!
I am only one person and our policy makers are impressed most by numbers, the more of us that speak up the better.
Auckland City Council is looking to close Libraries (no matter what they say) as part of ‘across the board’ cost cutting! Libraries are a soft target.
I know from experience that the current library trendy changes are unprofessional and not even a valid system - I know that instituting ‘trendy new philosophies’ is a way of disguising other agenda – I know that counting numbers is a way to make a case for downgrading or disappearing a service! Does our Council have an undeclared agenda? I believe so!
We all always used have equal access to all the books in the Library under the traditional system, and we all managed to borrow books. We were always able to choose to explore other genre, the books were/are always there. It only needed us to go down an aisle that we hadn’t been down before.
• I and others like me, now have had our choices taken away we now have no choice but to trawl at length through every genre, eliminating everything we don’t want.
For those of us whose natural style of search is systematic genre based and for those of us who only read one or two genre the new layout is a messy, confined, time consuming, a mind numbing maze. Spots on spines won’t help as we still have to look through the whole of fiction looking for them. A public library is a ratepayer funded community service and should include and be accessible to all members of the community, as it once very recently was, and the traditional libraries still are! 300 Public Libraries in NZ only 30 have adopted this philosophy.
I don’t mind change and actively support change, as long it a result of a consultative process which results in including and being accessible to more people. The new layout is not as inclusive or accessible as it was prior to the trendy changes.
My Blog documents my interaction with Council and more details.