Extended library services should be expanded

The extended online services being provided by Central Coast libraries (Libraries extend free online resources, Peninsula News, April 20) are to be heartily welcomed but they should not be seen as merely a temporary measure to tide us over the current difficulties.

These extra services not only should remain permanently in place but should set the pattern for further expansion into these user-friendly areas that will encourage library use.

This is the correct direction for library development in the region.

It should be generously funded by using the resources set aside for the unnecessary monumental central library that council is proposing to build in Gosford.

Incidentally, that is the worst location, as well as a waste of money.

What the Central Coast needs is a widely decentralised system of small libraries for direct local access, supported by powerful online programs which provide strengthened capacity to reach out to global information sources.

That is what a 21st-century regional library should look like.

Email, 24 Apr 2020

Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy.