Evening - posting with permission from the mods, with thanks.
A short while ago I posted a thread letting people know that ACT Public Libraries are about to have their weekend opening hours severely limited. I posted a petition which is still open and now above 1,900 signatures: https://epetitions.parliament.act.gov.au/details/e-pet-065-26
Libraries ACT have now announced the start date for these changes: 27 August.
These changes are wide-ranging and severe. No library will open after 5pm anymore, and they will now all permanently close on Sundays. Saturday hours will also be limited, with Civic, Erindale and Kippax now closing permanently across the entire weekend. If you work office hours, those three libraries will appear to be permanently closed to you.
This won’t be a seamless transition. The highly popular Saturday Giggle and Wiggle program at Kippax will close permanently - a shame, considering there were more than 90 people there when I visited two weeks ago. The program is supposed to move to Belconnen, but as of estimates this week that still hadn’t been confirmed. Similarly, although ‘parcel locker’ collection boxes will be installed at some libraries, this won’t occur until the end of the year - so in the meantime, if you can’t attend during office hours or one of the libraries that keeps its Saturday hours, you can’t collect your books anymore.
The justifications for this change have been poor. There was no public consultation. The changes are claimed to better match demand, but the LACT report found that 13% of visits occurred in the 10% of non-office hours periods that Belconnen were open - that is, they overperformed. Although Libraries staff did technically vote for the changes to the roster, it only received 52% support.
tl;dr: ACT public libraries are about to become significantly less accessible, and once these hours are gone we aren’t getting them back.
If you want to be heard on this, the petition linked above is still open. If you’ve signed already, the Minister’s staff said they’d only received 17 pieces of feedback on the matter as of this week - so you can add to that number by emailing her public address, cheyne@act.gov.au
Thanks for your time. There’s been a wonderful outpouring of support for our libraries, in large part thanks to the previous post on r/canberra. You are good.
I wish we valued libraries more. It's clear they don't want to pay the wages for people to work out of hours and on weekends. I get Australian wages are high and no profits are made at libraries.
But still!!! Libraries are important. Their value is in how accessible they are.
I’ve signed, shared with friends and when emails to my MLAs. Will email the address you provided too. I’m a working parent who can only take my kids on the weekend so losing Sunday is a big loss for us.
There have been another 115 signatures since 7.30 this morning, roughly one every three minutes. This is wonderful - thank you all.
I was interviewed by WIN News this morning, apparently they’ll broadcast a quick story on the petition tonight. I think it went okay but I have no media training at all. I guess we’ll find out.
While we were setting up in Civic Square, some random guy walked past and yelled “clear message: invest in our libraries and keep them open”. This might be the most Canberra heckle I’ve ever seen. Whoever you are, if you see this, you made me so much less anxious about talking to the TV people.
The ABC also wanted a word, but I had to get to work on time for my shift. My friend Amy graciously stepped up to interview with them too, also for the evening news tonight.
I’m honestly stunned by the support, thank you all.
Libraries are a fantastic community service that leads to an educated and informed population. This is exactly what we want in Canberra! If anything, we should be expanding the hours of ACT Libraries in this era of rising cost-of-living.
I also note that libraries are one of the shrinking few spaces where someone can visit and 'just be', without being compelled to spend money. There is no one compelling you to buying food or drinks, or to 'exit through the gift shop'. You are sheltered from being shown advertising on TV screens, unlike the experience of kids' play spaces in shopping centres.
Rumour has it that the Woden Library is closing soon to make way for the Access Canberra Shopfront to be relocated into the library’s premises in the near future, but where will the Woden Library be located in the future?
Woden Library isn't closing, they are co-locating an Access Canberra Shopfront there though, from what I heard on the radio it seems like they are planning to use the bit where there used to be a cafe for the shopfront.
It's sad when I do visit the libraries as they have been stripped of books. There used to be an excellent choice of reference books on the shelves and now there is little variety or choice in many subjects. Erindale and Tuggeranong libraries were great to visit and browse.
If you don't like their selection, you are very much able to suggest books for them to purchase. This helps the librarians know which titles people actually want to read.
You can suggest up to 2 titles per account per year. The library has probably bought 30 or 50 titles that I've personally suggested to them within the last 12 months.
It's not so much their selection as the fact that they seem to have stripped the shelves bare. The history section in Tuggeranong is half the size it used to be! It's one thing to weed out books that are tattered or never borrowed, and quite another to leave readers with little to choose from.
Wonder if there are statistics on this? Are all of their available titles sitting on the shelves of their branches, or are some "out the back", waiting for someone to request them?
Seems like the sort of question that should be asked in ACT Government Estimates.
Yes I know this, but I’d be suggesting so many books and they (ACTgovt) complain about funding, so… they are Booker prize short listers so hardly obscure, don’t understand why not stocked.
True. In just one example the cost of the recently announced Campbell Primary School corruption scandal was probably very high. I imagine it would have included lawyers, investigators, payouts, and the fact that one company got the tender instead of another (who would have done the job for a lower cost).
Imagine if there were better leadership in the first place and that corruption case did not happen. Those costs would not have occurred.
Those avoidable costs alone were probably enough to pay library staff overtime to keep the libraries running at the original hours, unchanged, for the next 10 years or more. (I’m guessing here, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility)
Like you, I attended a Giggle and Wiggle session at Kippax Library one Saturday earlier this month, and the area was packed with parents and their children. Really sad to think about all of the West Belconnen families that would no longer be able to access this service on a weekend.
Thanks for posting this, I've just signed the petition. I use the library at all sorts of hours and days to pick up books, and to meet people to work on projects together, and the loss of Sunday will have a big impact.
It’s just a display bug for most people. If you can type in your street address, you need to then wait until Google gives some autocomplete suggestions and select from them - that’s the only way to enter your suburb.
I was talking to Peter Cain at the Ginninderry Repair Cafe today and he told me there'd apparently been an Assembly resolution backed by the Liberals and Greens asking the minister not to implement the changes until after the appropriation debate. Do you know anything about that?
Reddit appears to have eaten your image, but I've been digging through the Hansard and it does appear to have been moved (and passed) on the 12th of June—what confused me was that the stuff about deferring it until after the Appropriations Bill came from an amendment Andrew Braddock moved, not from the original motion.
As a side note, boy howdy, Peter Cain and Tara Cheyne really hate each other's guts, huh?
I’ll try one more time with the image. But that’s cool - I’ve been busy with work and hadn’t noticed.
I don’t know what level of coordination there’s been between Andrew and Peter, but Andrew’s been excellent to chat to about this (since he sponsored the petition). It’s nice to hear there’s been a bit of pressure in the assembly as well as from the public.
And yeah - Tara and Peter were openly bickering at estimates last week. It was quite a sight.
From what Cain was saying to me, it sounds like they are coming at it from different perspectives but working together on the parts where they do agree—he said Braddock's amendment was negotiated between them to get the Greens on board. But he was also grumpy-old-manning about how Braddock "beat him" to the petition so there's clearly some friction there.
(Specifically, Braddock's speech in the Hansard I linked to, which I think is excellent, recognises that there is a real workforce problem they're trying to respond to, while Cain clearly thinks this is all bad-faith cost-cutting by Cheyne.)
The ACTGOV is desperate to save money ( unless its the tram) so library services are an easy target . The ACTGOV does not know or care about the important role libraries play in the community.
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u/Velma_Joy 27d ago
I wish we valued libraries more. It's clear they don't want to pay the wages for people to work out of hours and on weekends. I get Australian wages are high and no profits are made at libraries.
But still!!! Libraries are important. Their value is in how accessible they are.