Karl (pictured left) says there’s nearly a million items in the WCL collection, which also includes magazines, audio-visual media, and eBooks.
He says each of the 14 libraries is tailored to the community it’s in, with specialist staff selecting the items that will go in each.
“They’re all a bit different – the Newtown public library community will be different from He Matapihi Molesworth Library, and their collections reflect that.
“We have a Collection Development Team who decide on items for each community through engaging with and surveying the customers, and these items are processed by the 10 staff in the Cataloguing team at Te Pātaka so you can find them easily across all the libraries.
“We’re driven by the public. We don’t only have the great books you’ve always thought you should read, but the books people want to curl up on the couch with.”
Karl says 10,000 new items were distributed among WCL’s branches last month.
Making books accessible to everyone
Not all Pōneke residents are able to visit the library, and that’s where the Housebound Library Service team come in – taking the library to the people.
There are people who can’t come to the library – sometimes because of illness, frailty, old age, disability – including people of all ages. The team connects with hundreds of keen library users either in their own homes or rest-homes.
Clients are visited at home, and they tell the team what their reading or listening tastes are.
Then back at Te Pātaka, the team hunt through the bookshelves to find items to match their client’s interests. Their bag of items is sent out to their closest library branch and the volunteer carriers will collect and deliver them.