Central Library in Poole, the good stuff

The Central Library at Poole is a nondescript part of the shopping mall from without, but lovely and functional inside with a number of notable features:

cafe. Cafes are ubiquitous in public spaces in London, but this cafe was particularly well-placed; located between the teen area and the computer room, not far from the children's area. In fact the whole second floor of the library was remarkably well-designed for a small space and the teens have the best view in the house.

staffed health information center. The integration of other government functions into the library building seems more advanced in the UK. In this case, the National Health Service (NHS) staffs the Healthpoint health information center for some hours each week, and the collection is available for general use at all times. The Poole Book Prescription Scheme is another joint Library/NHS endeavor that encourages health workers to prescribe quality self-help books available through the library.

self-service RFID kiosks that process multiple materials at one time. The pile of materials is placed inside an opening in the kiosk, which reads and updates the entire stack. If the reader owes fines, these can be paid using the kiosk machine. Check out the pictures and details of these Intellident Paragon kiosks. Slight lack of humility in the product naming...

friendly staff. As the kiosks were brand new when I visited, the staff were not only manning a desk in the automated circulation entry/exit hallway, but also actively approaching readers to help them use the kiosks. Staff opinion was not settled on the kiosks, but good humor was being maintained!

Don't expect the Poole Central Library to have a beautiful, image-rich website. Usually subsumed into the borough government's website, public library pages in the UK favor function and accessibility over attractiveness. Perhaps this reflects user preferences in the UK, maybe it is a library budget/resources issue or a lowest common denominator that is enforced across all the government functions - I'm not sure.