When a pandemic forces everyone to chill out, it's no wonder people read more books in the downtime.
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Wollongong City Libraries has had to reinvent itself to be able to cope with demand after COVID-19 hit, and find new ways to help the people access free books, movies, learning workshops and children's storytime.
During lockdown, study rooms looked more like Australia Post sorting rooms, with more than 6500 items on reserve mailed to waiting customers.
Library and Community Services Manager Jenny Thompson said they had to act quickly in a time when people really needed to utilise services, such as increasing their range of e-books and filming storytime for kids.
In the four months to July 1, around 76,000 e-loans were processed, more than in the entire 2018-19 financial year when there were 61,000 e-loans.
The number of customers using the free online tutoring service Studiosity nearly tripled for the month of March alone. Resume writing programs have been most popular amongst the online learning offerings.
There have been more than 65,000 views of the 46 videos uploaded so far - mainly of children's storytime and learning workshops.
"The online views and online participation have been really significant, and we can just get out to a lot more people that way than if they physically had to come into the library," Ms Thompson said.
Wollongong Libraries now offer an app which brings all of their free online services together in a one-stop shop, with the number of devices downloading the app increasing by 9700 per cent from April to July.
Author talks are now being conducted via Zoom (an online conference platform). The first will be with lawyer-turned-science fiction writer, James Bradley. The award-winning author will be chatting about his latest novel Ghost Species on August 20 (reservations through Eventbrite).
Since the libraries reopened in June, returned items have needed to be sanitised or quarantined, while customer visits have needed to be timed.
But it hasn't deterred 23,260 customers borrowing more than 45,240 items since then.
"We really are encouraging our customers to come back," Ms Thompson said.
"We thought we'd have this incredible surge of people dying to get out of their houses and come to the library ... but we're finding it's a little slow; we think people are still very wary with COVID-19."
People unwilling to physically come into the libraries are welcome to return outstanding items through the contactless external returns chutes which are open 24/7. There are also no overdue fees or fines at the moment.