28 Oct 2015

Lobatse public library records show that 976 books are overdue because members did not return books on time.

Following up such cases was problematic because members did not find it important to respond to efforts made by the library to recover such books, according to Lobatse librarian, Mr Phillimon Tsimako. He said it was disheartening to have 976 overdue books.

He also indicated that 937 of the books that had not been returned were those taken by adults from 30 years.

“It is a great loss that the library is making because replacing such material is difficult since there are no strict measures on how to recover funds from members that do not return books,” he added.

Mr Tsimako said the library was a pool of knowledge and everyone had the right to use it, therefore it was imperative for members to return the books.

He said in the recent years, there had been a decrease in the budgets allocated to buying material for the library and this made it hard to upgrade material in the library, indicating that most of the books were outdated.

Furthermore, he indicated that since the introduction of Sesigo free wifi and internet, the library had seen a significant increase in the number of visits by the community adding that more than a thousand visits were recorded monthly y in Lobatse.

Mr Tsimako said the age group who frequently paid visits to the library were the youth as  they mostly came to use Internet to access social media. 

He said the introduction of free wifi to the libraries has seen a growing trend of  especially the youth visiting these sites.

The book lending service has nose-dived and the numbers of book readers and members have drastically dropped since the provision of free wifi internet services he added.

Even though the library offers various services such as postal, book lending, referencing, community internet, children's books and other recreational services such as games, internet use is the mostly used in the facility, and this probably has contributed to the slowing down of the speed on the internet he added.

However, Mr Tsimako still encourages the youth to fully utilize the library for their own good, even though he is concerned about some users who abuse the facility and the internet service, saying there has been instances where he has found individuals watching pornographic material and other videos that should be for private viewing not in a public place  such as the library. Ends