ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the location issues relating to the use of refurbished and extended libraries and the conversion of 'alien' buildings to public library premises. Site selection methods are considered valuable by the majority of librarian's. Service point use, however, may be more related to travel distance, particularly from the home, and questions the shopping centre location much-championed by librarians. Categories one to three cover three levels of shopping centre, fourth is civic or community centre's, and finally transportation corridors. The 1995 review of the public library service suggested that suitable locations for new public library 'outlets', as it called them, 'could include shopping centres, railway, bus and motorway service stations, and other places that attract sustained flows of people'. Selecting the location for a public library, however, can be a time-consuming and complex task in which financial and political influences may loom large.
