With Tauranga City Library opening at He Puna Manawa this Monday, April 4, The Weekend Sun is completing its series on the iconic community facility by covering how the recent move took place.

Libraries manager Joanna Thomas, her team of librarians and movers from Crown Relocations are about to complete the undertaking of transporting 120,000 books, magazines and DVDs to the Tauranga City Library's new location.

She has been preparing along with her team for the move to the new temporary base at He Puna Manawa on Devonport Rd and Grey St since July 2021.

This marks a historical moment for the Tauranga library, as the facility has been set in their current location at 91 Willow St since 1989 – a total of 33 years.

'We started with the archives and preparing the book collection, along with the DVDs and magazines about six months ago,” says Joanna. 'The physical moving has taken about four weeks, and finished up last week.”

Joanna says the majority of the time put into the move was planning and preparing, putting books inside boxes to be transported, and rearranging some of the catalogue.

'We did some ‘weeding', which is what we call taking out books that are older and have lost popularity.”

'Most notably, we have had to go through a large collection of motor manuals that show how to fix cars. 'These were once really popular, but no so much nowadays,” says Joanna.

'We had to make this collection much smaller, and although they are less popular parts of the collection are still stored somewhere safe in the meantime in case someone needs that collection.”

Joanna says the movers from Crown Relocations had put the books into cages, which were put onto a truck and wheeled off into their new location where they were placed onto the shelves.

'That part was easy. We also had several challenges we had to overcome. Some of our contractors had to isolate due to Covid-19, as well as some of our library staff.

'We had to keep changing rosters because of different staff shortages. We also had great weather for the first two weeks of moving, but the storm that hit in our third week of moving was another challenge to overcome.”

Joanna says at this time, the library staff were working on transporting precious books and archives, so in order to prevent damage the books were stored under blankets.

'We also wrapped the cages in glad-wrap to stop any rain getting in.”

Joanna and her wider library team are very excited to open again this coming Monday, April 4.

'We've still got a few things to move, such as beautiful new artwork and projector screens. There will be great things to see in the new temporary library.”

Joanna also adds that people will be able to look forward to the library café opening in the near future, as well as the children's school holiday programmes and digital activities.

Tauranga City Library will open its doors to the public on Monday, April 4. Vaccine passes will no longer be required on entry, ensuring everyone can access He Puna Manawa from the moment the new library opens.