BOOK lovers will be able to dive deep into fiction and non-fiction works as the Penola Community Library reopens its doors to the public.
After a two month closure, library staff will welcome visitors back to the facility from today.
While council-run libraries were permitted to open last month, the Penola facility remained closed as it is housed at Penola High School.
The state’s Education Department gave the facility the green light to open last week.
The facility was ordered to close in March and in response, staff established a click and collect service to provide community members access to resources, with librarian Miriam Williams labelling the initiative as a success.
However, Ms Williams was excited to have patrons back on site.
“Having the public allowed to source their own books once again is going to be fantastic,” she said.
“Although our click and collect option was quite popular while we were closed it will be wonderful to see everyone’s faces in the library.
“It also gives patrons another place to go during all this because the town has been very quiet recently.”
During the closure, library staff have been busy rearranging the facility and reorganising the catalogue.
“We were also taking part in the public library service collection project over the time we were closed,” she said.
“This is where we started clearing out our stock, getting rid of resources over 10 years old that were rarely borrowed and if it were borrowed we either kept or replaced it.”
Ms Williams said the library will be able to accommodate 20 people and visitors would be require to adhere to social distancing guidelines and sanitise on entry and exit.
“Usually unless we host a function – which we obviously cannot do at the moment – we almost never have 20 people in the library at a time,” she said.
“However we are preparing for that to change in case we have a rush over the first few days.”
The library will be open on Wednesday from 9am to 1pm and 1.30pm until 4.30pm and from 9am until noon and 12.30pm until 3pm on
Thursdays.
The opening hours will be reviewed in three weeks.
