Opening Date for New Taumarunui Library Confirmed

The end is in sight for the Taumarunui library to relocate from its current Hakiaha St location to Ruapehu District Council’s (RDC) head office building on Huia St.

For the past three months builders have been working at the Huia St office relocating customer services and other staff from one side of the building to the other and constructing the new library location.

RDC Community Librarian, Fiona Thomas, said that the builders have confirmed a target date of Saturday 11 October for the construction work to be finished.

“After the builders move out the book shelving, desks and other things of that nature need to be installed,” she said.

“Last but not least all the books and computers need to be moved across which is a huge logistical challenge.”

“To enable this the Hakiaha St library will close for the last time on Saturday 18 October and re-open in its brand new Huia St location after Labour Day on Tuesday 28 October.”

Mrs Thomas said that the relocation of the library has allowed council to have a complete re-think of how the library will operate and develop a purpose built space in a modern building.

“The Hakiaha St site has certainly reached the end of its useful life as a library with the building getting very old and suffering from ‘old building’ problems.”

“The new Huia St location will enable us to embrace new opportunities and make necessary changes in order to continue to deliver value to Ruapehu communities in the future,” she said.

Mrs Thomas added that with the relocation looming the library has stepped-up its weeding out of unneeded books which are all available for sale for a gold coin donation.”

“As a normal course of business libraries have a tremendous turn-over of books with new ones coming in all the time and to make room we need to have a continual clean out,” she said.

“The used books are from across all genres and for all ages in both fiction and nonfiction titles.”

“This is a great opportunity for anyone wanting to stock-up for their summertime reading or pick-up some great children’s titles.”

Mrs Thomas added that the books are all of really good quality and include a lot of well-known and popular authors.

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