04/08/08 - Conservatives To Deliver Extended Hours At New Central Library

SWINDON’S NEW CENTRAL LIBRARY – MORE CHOICE, MORE OFTEN

A major boost to opening hours, including Sundays and late nights during the week, will be a feature of Swindon’s Central Library when it opens on 20 October.

Along with 17,000 new books and over 60 free-to-use computers, the award-winning new building will see the roll-out of the Express Zone, which will offer popular library services for an extra four hours a day outside normal opening hours, Monday to Saturday.

And, for the first time, the Central Library will be fully open for four hours on Sundays.

Councillor Justin Tomlinson, Swindon Borough Council cabinet member for Leisure and Recreation, says: “The council was determined that once it had delivered a new library for the people of Swindon, it would have flexible opening hours to fit in with their often busy lives. The new Express Zone service is very much part of that.

“We didn’t want to repeat what we’d seen on fact-finding visits to other towns and cities, where otherwise excellent library facilities were closed just when people wanted to use them.”

The Central Library’s normal opening hours will be between 9.30am and 7pm Monday to Friday, and until 4pm on Saturdays. For the first time, the library will also be open on Sundays for four hours between 11am and 3pm.

The Express Zone will operate for one hour before the library fully opens (between 8.30am and 9.30am) and for three hours after it closes, Monday to Saturday. This means that on weekdays, library services will be available until 10pm at night, and 7pm on Saturdays.

Customers will be able to access the Express Zone by swiping their library cards to gain access. The main part of the library will be shuttered off, with the Express Zone offering the latest, and most popular, titles. It will also offer CDs and DVDs, quick internet access via four PCs, and the library’s two-day DVD and one-week book loan services (FastFilms and FastBacks). Reserved books will also be available for collection.

The new hours mean that the library will be fully open for 58 hours a week, and a further 24 hours a week with Express Zone – a total of 82 hours.