Minutes

Councillor Martyn Kellaway asked:

A constituent of Llanwern had an occasion to visit Ringland library to return some books that his elderly wife gets via the "At Home" service.  It appears that this service is no longer going to be available as there appear to be plans to demolish the library building and move it into the community centre.  The result of which is that due to lack of space the "At Home" service will no longer be available. 

I appreciate that the service has only been maintained to date due to the volunteers who have given up their time to fulfil the service, 

 Are you aware of what appears to be happening and whether or not the council has any alternative arrangements in hand so that those within the community who are unable to attend a library will be catered for?

Councillor Deb Harvey responded:

We will still be offering the full At Home service, throughout the period of closure and following the re-opening of the Hub.

Our proposal is to re-locate the spoken word and large print reserves that are currently located within Ringland and Malpas Libraries to Central and to then run most routes from this site.

The relatively small amount of large print and spoken word titles that can be shelved in the public areas of the three branches means we have a reserve store in each to meet the requirements of our At Home members. By re-locating these items to Central we will be able to maintain the service and actually improve the range of titles available for staff to select when putting together the monthly selection of titles. 

We will, however, continue to base a volunteer driver at each of the current three satellite libraries operating an At Home service, Ringland, Malpas and Rogerstone.  At Home clients requesting popular titles in standard print titles can be satisfied from the stock at those branches.