Wellington and the Wairarapa Regional Update

The major theme can be summarised as working together to achieve more, with shared services, building developments that will make a significant and positive difference to our customers and working on joint activities that are building our professional relationships with each other in the region.

The Wairarapa Library Service continues to thrive as Carterton, Featherston, Greytown and Martinborough libraries continue to work together to provide a coherent service for the Wairarapa.  A new position of District Librarian for the three southern Wairarapa libraries sees us welcoming Shirley Nightingale to our group.

While Upper Hutt Cuty Library undergoes major building developments, 21 June signals the beginning of Carterton District Library's move to temporary premises in preparation for the development of a six million dollar Events Centre.  This development will include a revamped and significantly bigger library while offering a range of additional community services including a Youth Centre.  Read more at wls.org.nz.

Read more (and see the great photographs!) about our recent hugely successful one day Wellington Regional Public Libraries Conference Refresh hosted and coordinated by Wellington City Libraries.  Refresh and reinvigorate it surely did!

The other significant regional development is Hutt City, Masterton, Wellington Institute of Technology (WelTec ), Kapiti and Porirua agreeing to move to managed services with Civica (Spydus library management system) which will, in the longer term, enable a bigger and brighter service for the participating libraries.

Upper Hutt City Library Redevelopment

The Upper Hutt Central Library is presently undergoing a major redevelopment, due to be completed mid October 2010, which will provide the Upper Hutt community with a public library that is capable of allowing the delivery of contemporary library services and innovative programmes.

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"Kapiti Writes" Celebrates Authors on the Kapiti Coast

Back in 2008, Kapiti Coast Friends of the Library ran a literary festival with invited authors holding sessions on their works at the Kapiti Coast District Libraries.  Many of the authors participating resided on the Kapiti Coast and it was a revelation to find just how many writers there were in the community.

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Refresh Regional Conference

The region held a well attended one day event focussing on issues of importance to public librarians.

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Libraries Sharing Services in the Wellington Region

We have been running this project so fast we still have not come up with a name for it!  But we’ll have one soon – there’s a regional competition happening as I write.

Hutt City, Porirua, Kapiti, WelTec and Masterton (including UCOL) libraries have signed up to a shared services project based around the SPYDUS Library Management System.  The LMS is hosted by vendor, Civica, out of their Auckland data centre. 

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