Wow! What a brand new spanking library. I was surprised and impressed. I didn’t expect to visit a shiny new public from Port Pirie at all. I thought this town might have been backward but I have been proven wrong! What a progressive little town.

Date of visit: 9 September 2021

Features: Apart from it being a nice looking library, here are some qualities that were worth mentioning:

Staff Members

I found the staff members very friendly and professional. At the time of the visit, there were 2 staff members on the floor. A gentleman in his 40’s and a young female staff, who was professionally well dressed. It was unusual to see her in that attire as most of the client-facing library staff I have seen in other libraries have dressed very casually, sometimes in jeans (often mistaking them for clients!).

The Collection

Sports Equipment and Jigsaw Puzzles

This was one of the few libraries I’ve seen that had sports equipment for lending (ranging from baseball, cricket to gym and weight equipment). The library also had a big range of jigsaw puzzles for people to borrow. I think they’re both very worthwile resources. I did wonder how popular they were though. From the image below, the sports equipment were sparse meaning that many were out. But it seemed the library had a lot of puzzles on the shelf at the time of my visit.

Magazines

It was interesting to see how they have displayed and shelved the magazines. The shelving just didn’t feel that secure to me especially when the trays were filled up to the max as you can see in the photo below. Call me old-fashion but I would have preferred to have them on proper more secure metal shelving.

Year Labels on Books

I might have mentioned this already in my previous post (I think it might have been when I visited the Coober Pedy Library), but I like these yearly labels on book spines. It shows clients when the books were acquired. Handy to know how old (or new) the book is actually. Looked like the Port Pirie Library made a practice of this also.

Picture Books

The picture book collection was neatly displayed and shelved in these cute train carriages, which I believe have wheels so they could be mobile. I liked them and they were big enough to fit a bulging set of picture books on each side of the carriage.

Sundries

I was impressed with the spaciousness of this library as mentioned before. Brand new everything! Although, I noticed there were only 4 PC’s available for use by the public at the time of the visit. I think it was to do with the COVID social distancing rules. All good. There weren’t many people when I was there anyway so I was able to use one of the computers. Ok the opening hours were weird because they were open on Sundays but not on Saturdays. Hmmm. But they did have a 24-hour return chute which was great!

Overall Impression: I really liked this library. At the time of the visit, it was next to the Port Pirie Visitors/Information Centre so you won’t have far to go if you wanted to check it out. And of course I highly recommend that you add this in your itinerary when you are in Port Pirie.