“Bestseller Collection” being retired

Illustration of a book with a bestseller sticker and a sad smileon itFor many years, Wellington City Libraries has provided a collection of popular titles called the Bestseller Collection. Titles could be borrowed by library members for a small fee, allowing readers to access titles that they would otherwise have to wait in a reserve queue for. The Bestsellers are being retired this weekend, to make way for a new collection, due to be rolled out in early 2023.

The new collection will contain popular titles that are free to borrow on a first come, first served basis. We look forward to telling you more as plans firm up!

If you currently hold a Bestsellers concession card, this can be used to borrow from the DVD collection in our libraries, or the CD and Vinyl collections found at Te Awe Brandon Library.

If you have any questions about this change, please talk to staff at your local library, or email enquiries@wcl.govt.nz, and we’ll be happy to help.

 

You can’t beat Wellington on a Fines Free day

Wellington City Libraries is fines free from 1 July! Councillors decided to go fines free after strong support in the community consultation on the Annual Plan in April. Most respondents supported this proposal.

This decision means :

  • no overdue fines will be charged from 1 July 2022 onwards
  • we will wipe any unpaid overdue fines on peoples’ library cards as at 30 June 2022.  We’ve waived your library fines goodbye.

We’re looking forward to never having to say “Do you know you have some overdue fines on your card?” ever again!

Here are some answers to questions you might have about these changes:

Continue reading “You can’t beat Wellington on a Fines Free day”

Update on email notifications

hand showing update sign

Unfortunately, over the past week there was an outage of our email notifications, which meant they failed to send. While this issue is now resolved, this means that if you have reserves available, or items coming due (or overdue) you won’t have been alerted by email.hand showing update sign

If you have active loans or reserves, please check your library card via the online catalogue or via our WCL Mini app, to see their current status.

We apologise if you were affected by this issue. If you would like to contact library staff about your account, please visit your local branch library, or email us at enquiries@wcl.govt.nz 

Outages and changes this weekend

hand showing update sign

This weekend, there will be a planned catalogue and check your card outage from 6am Saturday 19 September until Sunday afternoon to allow us to update our systems. During this time, some of our eLibrary and database services will also be affected — see timeline below.

As part of this system update, after many years of faithful service, the Classic and Easyfind catalogues will no longer be available, while our main New Catalogue will also be getting some new features. In the coming week, we’ll spotlight a few of these — but many mirror well-loved features of our old catalogues, as well as some new functionality that we’re excited to be able to share very soon!

Outage Timeline

Friday 18/09

Friday evening — some of our online resources become unavailable, but Overdrive, RBDigital and Beamafilm are unaffected all weekend.

See details for PressReader and Kanopy below.

Saturday 19/09

From 6am — the library catalogue & check your card outage begins.

PressReader — if you log into PressReader before this time via the app or website, you will still have access over the weekend.

Kanopy — if you log into Kanopy before this time via the app or website, you will still have access over the weekend.

Sunday 20/09

In the afternoon the catalogue and all eResources become available again, and the outage finishes.

If you need help with your library card during the outage, please contact our library branches during opening hours or get in touch via email and we’ll be happy to help!

Email enquiries@wcl.govt.nz

Cummings Park library closed temporarily

“We are replacing the worn carpet at Cummings Park Library in Ngaio this September,” says Laurinda Thomas, Libraries and Community Spaces Manager. “To ensure our carpet layers can get this done as quickly as possible we will close the Cummings Park Library from 10am, Friday 11 September and will reopen at 10am, Tuesday 15 September.”

“While our Ngaio branch is closed you can visit the neighbouring Khandallah and Wadestown teams for all your library needs! You’ll find their opening hours at wcl.govt.nz”

“All programmes and events during this time will be cancelled but we look forward to seeing you back at Cummings Park Library with our brand new carpet from Tuesday 15 September! Thank you for your understanding.”

If you have any questions, please call us on 04 479 2344 or email enquiries@wcl.govt.nz

Thank you Classic Catalogue

After many years of faithful service, the Classic and EasyFind catalogues will no longer be available after 19 September. Our suppliers will no longer offer this product, and have been concentrating all their efforts on our main new catalogue.

If you have previously created lists of links or tags, these can be copied and pasted to save in another document. We also recommend that if you have compiled links to individual items in the EasyFind catalogue, that you take the opportunity to change those links to point to our new Catalogue.

You can still search, browse, place reserves etc. Our new catalogue also offers several features which were not available previously such as a mobile version, ability to keep a history of your loans, more reviews and reading suggestions, and easier ways to create your own lists, tags and reviews.

Please ask staff if you would like more information on how to use our current catalogue.