Last night when I was looking up the address of this library I noticed on the ACT libraries website that the Kingston library was considered under the terminology of "Shop Front Library". I didn't think much of it at the time. I just thought they had converted a few old shops into a standard library - but no.
It really was like a small shop with books up and down all the walls and some computer terminals in the centre. All they needed was a guy up the back serving coffee and it would have been a book store.
These pictures do in fact make it look quite spacious - and you think that the back of the room might open out into something bigger. But No - that is it.
Although I am liking the concept, there seemed to be a few pro's and con's to this library model.
Pro's
It was a good way to really 'see' the books available. Sometimes I find that in the bigger libraries the books can actually be difficult to find.
The locality was really good - I love that you can be out for a coffee and drop into the library and pick up a book or two at the same time. Very user friendly
Con's
There were probably about 15 - 20 people in there when we went in this morning and it felt cramped. That may well have just been me taking up the space of two people or the fact that there isn't really room for a pram (or3) in there as well as that many people.
The concept of the 'shop front' library model is to be able to offer the same community services as other less centrally located libraries - except that as there isn't really a 'dedicated' children's space in this library due to size limitations. Add 8- 9 under 5's plus their mums and the few prams and you get one very uncomfortable space. Again- this may have just been how I was feeling due to taking up more room than normal.
Storytime is on at all local Canberra libraries on different days throughout the week. See website for more information.
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