In line with the Government’s COVID-19 roadmap, Hampshire County Council reopened public libraries for browsing from Monday (April 12). Hampshire Record Office will also reopen for pre-booked appointments from April 13.
Hampshire County Council’s Director for Culture, Communities and Business Services, Felicity Roe, said: “We’ve worked hard to offer residents a range of digital and ‘order & collect’ services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but we can’t wait to welcome people back through the doors in the coming weeks.
“The Government’s COVID-19 roadmap states that libraries can be included in ‘step two’ from April 12, so our teams are gearing up to reopen our doors from this date.
“There will be a range of measures in place to provide added reassurance to our customers. This includes reduced capacity to allow social distancing, pre-booking for public computers, and the quarantine of all books returned to us. We are also encouraging library users to use self-service machines, cashless payments and to download our app which enables you to check out books on your smartphone.”
Andover library posted on their Facebook page, “We’re really pleased to be able to welcome you back into the library for browsing. The same safety measures will be in place as the last time we were open. Please note that our opening hours for browsing are: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday 10:00 – 17:00; Tuesday 10:00 – 13:30 and Saturday 10:00 – 16:00. We are closed all day on Friday and Sunday. We look forward to seeing you!
To reduce wait times and allow as many people as possible to visit the library, people are asked to limit their visits to a maximum of 30 minutes and to keep browsing to an absolute minimum. There is a ‘fines holiday’ in place until Tuesday 1 June 2021 to allow time for customers to safely return all overdue items with no fines applied. Items returned after this time will still be subject to overdue fines.
