Library sites studied

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33155, 20 February 1973, Page 14

Library sites studied

Great emphasis was laid on the importance of siting central libraries in the busiest retail areas in Britain, the Christchurch City Librarian (Mr J. E. D. Stringleman) said in a report to the City Council last evening. A common practice was to allow a private developer to build the library and rent it to the authority, or to provide some ground-floor office and retail facilities, the rents from which furnished the loan for the new building. Mr Stringleman was re-

; porting on his visit to United ,: Kingdom libraries in the course of a trip to the Com- ’ monwealth Library Associa- • lion’s meeting in Lagos, Nigeria. ’ “One of the few librarians visited who had not suc- • ceeded in securing a central i site for his new building was . ashamed to confess that the old, outmoded building had done better business than the , new one. in spite of adequate parking on the new site,” Mr 1 Stringleman said. “Such lessons are hard to ignore.” Mr Stringleman’s main purpose in visiting England ’ was to examine the elec- ■ tronic book-charging systems developed there in the last .year or two. I

I Christchurch had to face ■ the prospect of replacing the • present system by the end of ■next year, and there! , appeared to be no reasonable alternative in use in iiNew Zealand. There were two systems in 1 Britain and both represented > the biggest advance in ■ library “house-keeping” for I many decades, he said. In ' spite of the fairly high ■ capital outlay — probably ■ about $50,000 to s6o,ooo—he considered that the advant- > ages of the systems made it imperative that Christchurch should adopt one of them. Both companies intended to send a representative to New Zealand, and the systems would be the subject of a further report. |