The Library renovations

The Council did some renovations at the local library a couple of months ago.   As I said in my earlier post, I'm not quite sure what was achieved (apart from the expenditure of ratepayers' money).  The service desk is now smaller, and a temporary table has been placed beside it to provide an additional position. The revised layout has involved the fiction area being swapped with the non-fiction area, and the newspaper/periodicals area being swapped with the children's area, but frankly the layout doesn't appear any more functional than previously.

But most notably, the previous higher  shelving in the fiction area has been replaced by shelving that is significantly lower.   Because there's been no increase in the total area area occupied by bookstacks, the result is that the library's capacity has been reduced.

No more than 4 shelves, please

Why has this occurred?   I guess that there's some standard for libraries that requires every book to be accessible to a child?    If so, the logic appears to be, well, if the result of having higher bookstacks is that the books on the highest shelf won't be readily accessible to a small percentage of users, then it's better not to have the books at all.   Put another way, unless 100% of users can reach them, then the 95% of users who can reach them can't have them either!  Is this really what "equal opportunity" (or whatever) is about?

What next?   I see that tactile banknotes are on the agenda.   And if it's impracticable to implement these, do we abolish banknotes?