Piha Community Library Trust

Providing a Library Service for the people of Piha, Karekare & Anawhata 

Our Future: 

Our progress from a very small book exchange set up by members of the Country Women's Institute to today's elegant, Peter Joyce-designed, library has not been accomplished without a great deal of planning and years of fund raising by the members of the Library Committee.

But we can't sit back on our achievements and think there is nothing more to be done.  We spend a great deal of time on future planning as the communities that we serve (Piha, Karekare and Anawhata) continue to grow and there is a great need to keep pace with providing the best possible service for the changing population mix.

In the last two years, in particular, we are finding that our library space is struggling to keep up.  Early last year we made our 1000^th membership enrolment, and in the intervening period we have added almost 200 more members to the list. 

We have worked on our library policy document and a procedure manual in an attempt to eliminate inconsistencies or errors, and we continue to revise these documents to allow for changing needs and our future planning.

In the last 12 months we have also completely repainted the library, we have fitted special gates to the deck to ensure that children can be kept safe in the library precincts while parents are choosing materials or when special children's activities are taking place and we have relieved some of the overcrowding of materials such as chairs and library decorations for special occasions by having a shed placed under the building for storage purposes.

Some of our present assessment of future planning includes:-

• The expansion of our oral history and historical documents project.  This would probably best be served by small enclosure under the library, properly climate controlled, to house this collection safely.
• The provision of computer terminals in the library to allow members to browse through the library collection.
• An assessment of the possibility of expanding the children's area to allow a better activity area for our ever-growing numbers of younger members.
• The provision of on-line services.
• The re-arrangement of the shelving in the children's area to provide much more space to allow better display of our collection.
• Additional options for our very popular DVD services to members.
• The moving forward of the long-planned setting up of a formal governance and management system: probably with an incorporated society or trust to ensure proper guardianship of this valuable community asset into the future. 

All these plans take place alongside the almost daily planning of the purchases of library material.   The library acquisitions do not take place without a great deal of searching of catalogues from the various publishers and scanning of the latest audio-visual releases to ensure that we continue to pick the best of what is available for the enjoyment of our members. 

The Waitakere City Council continues to make us a generous annual grant to cover the cost of lending material for our members - this in response to the lack of Council owned library facilities in Piha, Karekare and Anawhata.   All other library needs are met by the income that the Library Committee generates.

As we plan for the future, we are careful to put aside into our development fund some of our income to ensure that the library will continue to develop according to the needs of our members.