Lake Macquarie City Council looks set to replace it's current mobile library vehicle, with a decision to adopt the recommendation due at its next meeting on July 25.
The current vehicle is a 17 metre long semi-trailer which has been in service for about 10 years and is due for replacement. However it's costly to run, chewing up 46.16 litres of fuel per hundred kilometres when fully loaded, and is too large to access some of the newer suburbs in the local government area as well as some of the nursing homes and pre-schools.
It's hoped the purchase of a smaller, long wheelbase high top van will overcome these limitations. The cost to run would be less than half of the current vehicle at just 15 litres per hundred kilometres, while the smaller "pop-up" style van could also visit community festivals and events such as the farmers markets at Speers Point Park.
The mobile service will continue to compliment the static libraries in Lake Macquarie.
Council's Cultural Services Manager, Narelle Reichert believes it would provide a more sustainable and accessible library service for the community.
"We're quite excited and think this is a really positive move forward for the library service, and it's really going to offer a service to the community in locations that they never thought of their library being before", she said.
