28 March 2007

A mobile library instead of a real one

| johnboy
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Our Glorious Leader has trumpetted the solution to a growing dearth of libraries in Canberra.

It seems the Civic Library is closed for the forseeable future after its roof turned out to not be up to scratch back in the supercell thunderstorm of a month ago. Griffith Library of course was worth more dead to developers than it was to the Government alive.

The solution it seems is to drive a bus full of books around and the literature seeking plebs can line up to avail themselves of it when it comes by.

“The mobile library van will be parked at Civic Square every Wednesday lunchtime, from noon until 2pm, for the next several weeks, while repairs to the library building are completed.

Mr Stanhope also announced that the Mobile Library would commence regular visits to Griffith on Thursday mornings, beginning this week. The mobile service would be located in the car park off Stuart Street, just near the Griffith Shops, from 9.30am until 11.00am.

There are some hops Civic could be back up and running in 10 weeks. Now many of you had your offices disrupted by water damage from the storm, how long did it take to get back to work?

Was the Civic Library built particularly badly? Or is the ACT Government being particularly bad at getting it back up and running?

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Cool, a roster of the labor clubs.

Could we have a mobile Al Grasby statue also????

It is now

Well, this will be sad news for the people of Mawson, Monash and Page who previously had the Mobile Library turn up at their retirement villages on Wednesday lunchtimes.

I thought Borders was Civic library?

i wiah the benefits of libraries were advertised with he same budget that borders uses.

in the same year that stanhope takes advantage of borders opening to get some positive media coverage, he closes a public library and prevaricates on whether the land will be sold.

i also blame parents who equip their kids with mobile phones and unsupervised PC use at home, where they waste hours on nothing. that time could be spent reading real books or wandering a library where books sometimes just catch your eye and open up whole new worlds and ideas.

but in a society where cabbages glue themselves to idiot boxes for ten hours a day. is it any surprise their children emulate that behaviour.

Well… I’ve got no knowledge of the specifics, but having seen libraries damaged in the past – a bit problem is often the condition of the books themselves. It’s a bit more complicated that letting them dry out as mold/bacteria can take hold quickly. Replacing a collection can be a time consuming process. Now with that said – the new Borders seems to have replaced the portions of their damaged stock quickly, although they would have had warehouses standing by for those books.

your naivety surprises me JB.

this is a tried and true governmental tactic.

you reduce the quality and value of the services to the public incrementally. while telling them they are in fact getting a better and improved service.

when the service is no longer of any value to the citizens, and they stop using it – it is then stopped altogether.

they then flog the property to the highest bidder.

It is probably the insurance company dragging the chain. They have to pay for lost earnings on shops, childcare centres etc, so those were fixed very quickly. Community facilities are taking much longer. Turner Seniors Centre is still out of action too.

Here’s an idea. Why not just move all the books into a building that works, and run a library from there for the ten weeks? I believe there’s a building in Griffith that would be ideal.

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