Review of Carmarthenshire library services

A better, improved, reading and resource service will be offered to children and young people following a review of Carmarthenshire’s Schools Library Service.
The review was undertaken as part of a county-wide exercise to identify efficiency savings and make best use of resources in every council department.
Here in Carmarthenshire, this review will lead to a better service, with pupils and teachers having access to a wider range of materials than they had previously.
Head of specialist and business services, Elin Cullen, said: “The Review has provided an opportunity to examine the service provided to children and young people across the whole of the county in order to ensure equality and uniformity of provision. This has resulted in redeployment of resources and closer integration with the public library service.
“It will also lead to an improvement of the service at both primary and secondary school level, whilst also achieving the budget efficiencies needed.
“We are proud to be able to achieve this, at a time when other local authorities have totally withdrawn their Schools’ Library Service.”
Following the review, secondary schools will be able to borrow up to 99 items at any one time through the Schools Librarian, meaning that schools will get more out of the service than under the previous system.
In primary schools, the current van delivery service will be replaced by a box delivery service for schools that are more than one mile away from the nearest library. A member of the teaching staff will have a ticket which will allow up to 30 items to be borrowed at any one time. For those schools within one mile of the library, teachers will have the same entitlement but will collect the items from their nearest library.
If teachers and schools make full use of the service, they will have access to more material than in previous years.
A range of other support services will continue to be offered, including library skills lessons for year seven pupils, loans of literacy sets and free recycling for unwanted books.
In addition, an online reference service will be made available through the library website which pupils can access at school and at home.
Consideration is also being given to reprioritise the library budget in order to increase the level of funding for children’s material throughout the county to satisfy demand.
A catalogue of books and resources can be viewed on the libraries page of the council’s website www.carmarthenshire.gov.uk

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