Response to ODT Article - 13 February 2025

Published on 13 February 2025

Waitaki District Council would like to address an article in today’s Otago Daily Times regarding the upcoming addition of new services to the Oamaru Public Library.

We’ve been in contact with LIANZA, an organisation that we highly respect, and they have kindly given us the full statement they provided following questions asked by the media.

The questions include claims from the Leave Our Libraries Alone group which are inaccurate, but which Council had no opportunity to respond to.

The LIANZA quotes used in the article are sourced from a letter sent in August 2024 to Mayor Gary Kircher, and did not include the following additional statement from LIANZA which they have allowed us to publish here:

In addition to these comments, LIANZA would like to add that public libraries' provision of council services in addition to library services is not new. There are other library-council service hubs over the country managing the range of services and this is a trend.

While service desks might be found in these community hubs, they tend to have the trained library staff to provide the expertise needed for library work.

Waitaki District Council responded to the August 2024 letter from LIANZA and addressed each of their key points, in August 2024. We are publishing that letter on our website today.

Most important is that Waitaki District Libraries had three qualified librarians prior to transformation, and still has three qualified librarians today.

Councils Library Manager left their role last year during transformation, but they were not a Head Librarian. They were replaced by the Arts, Culture and Heritage Manager, who oversees our cultural facilities.

We are not ‘replacing’ library assistants, we are expanding the skills and services the current assistants can offer in their new roles in the library as part of a wider customer service team.

While we have six libraries across the District, four of them are volunteer run – with assistance from our qualified librarians at the Oamaru Public Library.

If at any point the Oamaru Mail, or Otago Daily Times, had approached Council regarding these questions, we would have been happy to provide them with all of this information.

Letter in response to LIANZA enquiry in August 2024: LIANZA-Response-8-August-2024.pdf(PDF, 194KB)

LIANZA Statement: LIANZA-STATEMENT.pdf(PDF, 41KB)