The Invercargill City Library is set to be "future-proofed" after councillors voted to adopt a new strategy.
The draft Invercargill City Council Libraries Strategy Te Haeata 2023-28 report was presented to council at yesterday’s community wellbeing committee by council manager business transition Richard McWha.
Mr McWha said the strategy was created to guide the library forward and prepare it for changes in information technology.
"Libraries have always been a vestibule of information and access to information, and we realise that as we move forward it will become much more of a social service and a digital service to actually interpret information and become more about literacy, whether that’s visual, text based, interpretive research — all of those sorts of aspects.
"We used to go to a library to find information, and once we were in that library we knew that information was 99% correct. It was a simpler time. Now, there’s no shortage of information. What we lack is the ability to interpret and use critical thinking to understand which information is real, what needs a critical lens on it and where to find it and how to research — and that’s much more a process of education and literacy that libraries are moving into.
"The strategy will be implemented with the aid of library staff to ensure it retains authenticity with those employees."
Some things in the strategy were ready to be moved on right away, including developing the look and feel of the library and staff training, he said.
"We acknowledge that people come to the library not only for that learning and literacy aspect, but a social connection. It may be the only stable, warm place that some of our community visit on a day-to-day basis, so we are providing as much a social connection as anything else."
