Whanganui's Davis Library celebrating 40 years this weekend

Pete Gray says public libraries will continue to play "a particularly key role in the community". Photo / Bevan Conley

Forty years after the Davis Central City Library opened to the public, Whanganui District Libraries manager Pete Gray says it's still relevant and an important community facility.

The Pukenamu Queen's Park library marks its 40th anniversary on Sunday, and Gray said it remained a place for the public to visit and "just be".

The library is named after Whanganui philanthropist SM Davis, whose trust provided $200,000 ($937,796 in 2020) towards its construction.

"Our focus as a library is very much on promoting literacy and reading as basic core skills for living in the 21st century and being able to participate as a citizen," Gray said.

"Literacy is more than just reading, it's about digital literacy and it's about information literacy, but underpinning all of that is the actual literacy of being able to read.

"Public libraries play a core role in people maintaining and developing that, and in many ways that's why they were set up in the 19th century, when most public libraries began."

Gray, originally from the United Kingdom, said one thing that had struck him when he arrived in New Zealand was how "astonishingly expensive" books were to buy here.

"That's where public libraries play a particularly key role in the community, because they enable everyone to have access to books and information, without needing to have a big income to enable them to do so.

"The community shares the cost and we share a resource which provide equal access to all."

Lynley Fowler in the Davis Library just prior to her retirement in 2017. Photo / Bevan Conley

Lynley Fowler began working at the neighbouring Alexander Library in 1967 when it was still the main community library in Whanganui. She told the Chronicle that part of the money raised to build the Davis had come from "door knocking around the streets".

"We desperately needed more space," Fowler said.

"We investigated putting a mezzanine floor in [at the Alexander] and maybe building a second storey out the back, but then we got the Davis grant so the decision was made to construct a whole new building.

"Aunty Phyllis [Brown, former Whanganui district councillor] was the councillor who kind of spearheaded it."

Fowler worked at the library until she retired in 2017, but still volunteers at the Alexander once a week.

"Before the opening [of the Davis] we closed the Alexander on the Tuesday and then we had three days to pack everything up and move it across the road to the new building.

"By Friday morning the carpet still hadn't arrived, it was held up on the wharf in Auckland due to a strike I think. We couldn't put the shelves up to put the books on until the carpet had arrived, so it was a bit of a scramble at the end.

"On the Saturday there was the big opening, and the staff were actually only allowed into the building at the same time as the public.

"We got to the counter just as people were bringing books up and we were asking 'where have we put the biros, where have we put this, where have put that?'. We couldn't find anything."

The Whanganui community rush to get books issued on the Davis's opening day. Photo / Supplied

Fowler said the gradual increase of non-fiction issues at the Davis was halted by the advent of the internet in the 1990s.

"A group of us went over to Massey to see an internet demonstration for the first time and a link or something wasn't working so we just sat there for an hour and a half. I remember driving back saying 'this internet thing will never catch on'. Famous last words."

Gray said despite the rise of online learning and information, public libraries like the Davis still had an important role to play in the community into the future.

"The thing with paper and books is they last for a long time, hundreds of years. They don't need power or batteries to operate.

"The death of the book has been predicted on a regular basis for the last 40 years, and we're still waiting. It's a bit like fusion power really, it's always 10 or 20 years away and never turns up.

"We have 250,000 people coming through the doors of the Davis every year and around 450,000 items are issued over a 12-month period.

"In terms of footfall it's probably the busiest of all council facilities."