I haven't seen the figures for July yet, but I thought it worth mentioning that the interim services at George Furness House and the Lewinson Centre appear to be a success. There were gloomy predictions when the project was being designed, including some wildly exaggerated claims of the "closure of Willesden Library."
The figures for May and June tell a different story. Admittedly both issues and visits are markedly down, but that was only to be expected. The book issues for those two months still amount to 16,404 issues for those two months. That gives Willesden a respectable 10.9% of book issues in those months, which is surprisingly just ahead of the Town Hall/Wembley library figure.
Visits for the same period are 40,937, which is just over 19% of the total. Incredibly that makes the interim service at Willesden our second most popular library in that period.
I expect that Willesden's overall share will start to reduce as the new Wembley Library becomes more established, but it is still quite a testament to the planning that went in to maintaining the service during the rebuild period. Of course, once the new facility opens in 2015, it should have dramatically higher figures.
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