Letters: Bouquets and brickbats for library

Te Aka Mauri library and child health hub. Photo/File

The feedback about the Te Ara Mauri: Library and Health Hub suggests that either the process used to align the library's strategic plan with council's 2030 Vision and its "refresh" failed, or that the council's ideology does not enjoy fulsome public support.

The bouquets for Te Ara Mauri are about ambience, friendly staff, modernity, open plan, the children's area, Te Arawa research facilities, and Jean Batten Park.

The brickbats are about parking, culturally offensive signage, wasteful spending on health services, and losing intimacy and teenage spaces.

How can this discord be resolved? Clearly a strategic review needs to engage all legitimate stakeholders to generate fresh common ground for development and to end the culture wars over what counts as valuable knowledge.

The planned review involving staff and the current council only could renegotiate the status quo, with two major challenges.

Mana whenua should rightly expect that the library will serve as a repository of their cultural taonga and support the learning of te reo Maori.

However, if biculturalism is regarded as a practical step towards multiculturalism in a community that is diversifying fast, then the library and council should also promote interculturalism for success in a globalised world.

The "holistic library and health care model" won't happen. It requires interprofessional collaboration and organisational integration.

Instead, let's rediscover the purposes of our public library.
(Abridged)
REYNOLD MACPHERSON
Rotorua

Website easy to read
Well done on the Rotorua Daily Post website: it's easy to read and doesn't have an obsession with creepy stories or fake headlines.

A page showing rural road closures might be a feature to think about.
G J PHILIP
Rotorua

Second chance
I think what Ngarimu Simpkins has done to become reinstated at the school is to be applauded (Local News, March 17).

He has obviously worked very hard to impress the panel to gain his exemption, he also has strong backing from Rotorua Boys' High School which indicates he's very good at his job, as well as plenty of mana in the Rotorua rugby community.

Everybody who makes this much effort deserves a second chance, even young teenagers who are "going places" being caught in the act can be a catalyst for change.

Let's move forward.
Julian Thompson
Rotorua