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Frequently asked questions

Penrith City Council's vision is for a sustainable and prosperous Regional City with a harmony of urban and rural qualities. Our organisation's mission is to implement Council’s strategy and program, through skilled and responsive management, by valuing staff, partnerships and community involvement, by providing quality customer service and upholding ethical standards and behaviour.
The main branch of the Library is located in the Penrith City Council Civic Centre at 601 High Street, Penrith (that is, on the north east corner of High Street and Castlereagh Road). The Civic Centre building is located at the western end of Penrith Westfield and across from the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre.

Library membership is free for residents of New South Wales. 

To join, simply go to your nearest library branch. You will need to show proof of name and residential address when joining (e.g. current driver’s licence, health care card, council rate notice, electricity or gas bill etc.).

If you are under 16 years of age you will need a parent or guardian to join on your behalf. 

A 'one off' subscription of $18.00, or $14.00 for a concessional membership subscription, applies to members who are non-NSW residents. 

Online membership is available by clicking on the Register tab at the top of the home page. This membership allows access to all e-resources. It can be converted to a full membership to borrow physical items by visiting one of our branches. 
Members may have up to 20 items on loan at any one time, and 10 items online. Reference books, Local Studies material and other special collections are unable to be borrowed. Items may be borrowed for up to 3 weeks and renewed twice. 
Depending how long the items are overdue. Where fines and/or charges have accrued on the overdue items, further borrowing of items is prevented until the overdue items are returned and outstanding charges are paid.
You may return items to any Penrith City Library branch.
A card lasts as long as it is physically useable. However, even though you retain the same card, you will be asked to re-register every two years so that we can keep up with any changes to your registration information. If the card has been worn due to extended use over time, it may be difficult to scan, and can be replaced free of charge.
There is a $5.00 charge for replacing a lost or damaged card. Proof of identification is required. Concession card holders and children under 16 are free of charge. A cardless membership is also available.
Yes, through the ‘after hours’ book chutes located at each branch.
The library catalogue can be accessed from home. It lists the print and media resources available in the library branches. It provides home access for library members to a wide range of online databases. Through the borrower login option on the catalogue library members can view their loans and library charges, reserve items and track their progress, renew their loans, track inter-library loan requests and suggestions for purchase. Specific purpose messages may be displayed for library members, for example alerting them to new titles. To use the borrower login option, it requires you to have a current library membership number. It will also request a PIN number which is your date of birth – 8 characters – ddmmyyyy.

Items can be reserved at a cost of $1.50 per item. Payment is taken upon collection. 

Alternatively, if you prefer to pick up the item yourself on the same day at another branch, library staff will ring to ensure the item is available to be put aside for you. There is no charge for this service. 

Inter-Library Loan requests can be made for some material not held in the library's collection, for a minimum fee of $7.00 per item, to be paid upon collection of item/items. 

The inter-library loans staff will confirm if any additional charges are required by the other lending library service.

Notification is sent when the item is available for pickup at your preferred location. The progress of the inter-library loan request can be tracked via My Library. 

Library members can suggestion titles for purchase at any library branch or through the services section of the Library Online Catalogue. The library reserves the right to decline a suggestion based on library collection criteria, such as general suitability, age, price and format. The progress of the suggestion request can be tracked via borrower login and online patron messages.
Contact library staff as soon as possible to enable prompt checking. When an item is still on your card and you report it as ‘returned’, library staff will check the shelves of all branch libraries and you will be asked to check all possibilities again. The item will stay on your card until located. You are responsible for the item until the situation is resolved.
Penalties may be imposed for the late return, loss or damaging of items. These may include fines, full replacement costs including processing charge, the withdrawal of borrowing privileges or banning from the Library.
It is your responsibility to notify the library if any of these situations occur. It is a condition of membership that you are always responsible for all items taken out on your card. If items are damaged, lost or stolen, you will be required to pay the replacement cost of the item/s, including a processing charge.
YES! Let us know whenever you change your name and/or address on your library card. It is a condition of membership that you notify the library of any such changes.
Both the Penrith and St. Marys branches are open on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The first 30 minutes per day is free for library members only, after this the cost is $3.00 per hour. Technology members can access the internet for $4.50 per hour. 

Unlimited FREE Internet access is available for emails, banking, government, employment, and educational sites. Internet terminals and free Wi-Fi are available at all three branches; Penrith, St Marys, and St Clair. 

The password is your date of birth in the form of an eight digit number, e.g.: 1st January 2000 would be 01012000. If you are still experiencing login difficulties please call the Library for assistance on (02) 4732 7891 during opening hours.

A study room at Penrith Library can be booked for up to 2 hours per day, in one session, for study purposes only. It can be booked via the Library catalogue under Services Book a Study Room. A full Library membership is required to make a booking. 

Penrith Library has the Peter Goodfellow Theatrette, and St Marys Library has the William Garner Room which are available for hire. You can either apply online here OR you can call the Library on (02) 4732 7891 during business hours.

In order to place a reservation, you first need to perform a search using the Library Catalogue. As you browse through the records retrieved by your search, you can place a reservation for individual titles or for a set of titles. Please refer to the section on placing reservations in the How To help page for details.

If you can't find the item you are looking for in our collection, we can usually obtain it for you using our Inter-Library Loan (ILL) service. If you think the item you are looking for would be useful to have in the Library, you can make a request for purchase instead. Some charges may apply for these services. You will need to log in to use these services.

Yes you can. Please refer to the section on renewing loans in the Using My Library help page for details.

As you browse through the records in your result set after performing a search in the Library Catalogue, you will notice that some records are displayed with a number of stars. This indicates that one or more reviews have been attached to the record displayed. The number of stars displayed is an average of the ratings given to this record by the reviewers.

Do the following to add your review to a record:

  1. Retrieve the record you want to add your review to and display in full display.
  2. Click on the link to Add a review. This will display a form for you to complete.
  3. Enter your borrower ID and password if you are not already logged in.
  4. Select the rating you would like to assign.
  5. Enter your comments. You can enter as much text as you like. Press Enter to start a new paragraph.
  6. Select the Continue button to submit your review. Your comments will be reviewed by library staff before being made available for general access to others.

You can also amend and delete existing reviews by accessing these records in My account. Please refer to the section on ratings and comments in the Using My Library help page for details.

An alert profile allows you to create a profile that matches your preferences for materials you would like to use. These profiles are scanned as part of the library's overnight housekeeping and any new works that meet the profile's criteria are added to the "profile set" for the particular profile. If any new works are added to your profile set as part of the nightly scan, you will be sent an email containing brief bibliographic details for each work, as well as a hyperlink to the work. When you receive this email, you can click on the hyperlink to go directly to the work and place a reservation against it if you wish.

If you are logged into the library catalogue, your savedlists will not be deleted. They will remain until you decide to remove them.

You can add items to a savedlist if you are not logged in, however this will normally be kept on the system for two days. It will be automatically cleared after this time.

Please refer to the My SavedList help page for more information on how to use this facility.