The staff at the Rhodes University Library are highly committed to ensuring that Grahamstown residents benefit from the expansion of the new library facilities.
The staff at the Rhodes University Library are highly committed to ensuring that Grahamstown residents benefit from the expansion of the new library facilities.
They are currently dedicated to highlighting the two levels at which the community can use the library. The first is through an annual fee of R50.
This allows members of the public to have visitors’s status which includes some borrowing rights and full use of the library facilities.
The second measure expands further to incorporate those in financial need. They need to just sign in at the security desk and are entitled to receive full use of the library even though they do not reserve the right to borrow from the library.
The library’s deputy director, Jeanne Berger said that the library team is working on a brochure to make members of the community aware of the fact that the new library facilities also extend to them.
“The library staff is extremely pleased to see this project coming to an end, it is a dream come true and it is very satisfying to see that student users and Grahamstown locals are making use of the facility,” Berger said.
The library has been criticised in the past for its restrictive access system towards nonstudents especially since its mission for expanding the library was so it could become a significant resource for the wider Eastern Cape community.
However, the new programme has found a way to include the community while protecting the library and the information it contains.
Berger added that the Rhodes Main Library has a close relationship with the Grahamstown Public Library and thus they encourage school children to rather attend the public library because the level of material available at the Rhodes Library is not always appropriate or accessible for school children.
However the Rhodes Library does help the public library with photocopies and books and will take pupils on tours of the newly established Rhodes Library.
