Wellington City Libraries: events, books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, blogs and more (tweets by WCL web team)

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Books, CD's, DVDs, Magazines, Free WiFi

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A great place to chill

There are heaps of events on offer for your little ones at the Wellington Library. From ukeleles to live illustration demonstrations. Pop down for one of the events, or just go explore the book collection! There is no better way to escape the cold than rugged up with a good book!

Love the city library for a relaxing place to chill and hang out. Great cafe upstairs, and very easy to find your way round the book sections too. #myfoodbag

In this digital age, where we’ll all speeding at breakneck pace down the information super highway, you can forget just how all-encompassing, useful and even comforting the Wellington Central Library. In my university days I used to spend hours here – and you still can’t beat grabbing a pile of month-old overseas fashion magazines and curling up in one of the armchairs when it’s wet and wild outside. It helps that the coffee and food at the in-house Clark’s Cafe is great, too.

If books were beds, this would be everywhere I’ve ever slept. I love this place. I will marry it when society opens up its mind to accept our love.

I know I put this place on basically every list but its basically the tits and it’s paid for by your rates so make the most of it. It’s DVD collection is extensive and cheap!

A place of refuge on a rainy day. An impressive array of books, CDs to hire and a thorough selection of rare textbooks useful for your studies. Replete with a cosy cafe serving piping hot soups, the library is an inexpensive (free!) way to pass a few spare hours in the CBD.

…or more specifically the graphic novel section round the back. Picking one at random and having a leaf through has always been my go-to way of getting through those awkward 20-to-40 minutes gaps, to small to do anything proper but too long to just mess around on your phone, you can find yourself in in the central city between meetings or bits of work. Comics have been shown to be the most efficient form of media in terms of time consumption, so it’s a breeze to finish a whole book in that time (well, go over a hundred pages and there’ll be a problem) making the gap a culturally accomplished one.

Reading an actual book is such a novelty these days so getting into a building devoted to housing books is a great adventure for a rainy day. Hide away down one of the aisles and immerse yourself in anything from politics to pottery: it’s brilliant.

You’ve got to get there early in the day because it fills up quickly, but the early rise (and it’s not that early; 9.30 most days) is worth it because there are power-points a-plenty and more than enough desk space, and, most especially, because of the quiet. Obviously it’s quiet, it’s a library, but because it’s right in the centre of town you can still make out the buzz of the bustling real world all around you. This is, at least for me, is the perfect hybrid. Quiet enough to work and concentrate but not that hideous, stark no-sound silence that tends to distract me even more with its bleakness.