Wellington City Libraries

Wellington City Libraries
Established 1893
Location Wellington, New Zealand
Branches 12
Collection
Size 600,000 books, 450,000 magazines, and 85,000 CDs, DVDs, videos
Website http://www.wcl.govt.nz
The Wellington Central Library at its present location

Wellington City Libraries is the public library service for in Wellington, New Zealand. The 12 branches house over 600,000 books. The largest is the Wellington Central Library branch.

Branches

Wellington Central Library

The central library first opened in 1893 on the corner of Mercer and Wakefield Streets in a building subsequently used as the City Gallery Wellington. In 1991 the new central branch library opened on Victoria and Mercer Streets along the edge of the Civic Square. Ian Athfield of Athfield Architects had designed the new building, which Fletcher Development and Construction built.

The library building consists of three main floors. The ground floor contains fiction, the Sound and Vision centre, the Young Adult and Children's collections and the main circulation desks. The first floor houses the sciences, humanities, arts, music and literature collections. The travel and history and New Zealand reference collections are located on the second floor. Two floors above the Library have until recently been leased by the Department of Conservation. A basement level serves for vehicle parking and for day-to-day circulation duties.

The high-level portico bridge linking the library building to the WCC service centre building is to be demolished (2013) as an earthquake risk. [1] [2]

Corner view of Wellington Central Library

Awards

The library has won two New Zealand architectural awards; the Environmental Award in the Carter Holt Harvey Awards in 1992 and the National Award for Architecture 1993 sponsored by the New Zealand Institute of Architects.

In 2006 the New Zealand Music Board honoured the Library with an excellence award for its "Sing along with Stu" storytime-programme.

References

  1. ↑ "Civic Square building bridge may come down". Stuff/Fairfax. 8 January 2013.
  2. ↑ "Central city office blocks close for assessment". Stuff/Fairfax. 23 July 2013.
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