“In order to ensure the success of the new agencies an assessment of the skills required to support our new service delivery model has been completed and the skill set is significantly different to the skills required for the mobile library service,” the libraries’ chief executive officer, Chris Kelly, said yesterday. 

“The three staff who have been delivering the mobile library service have been given the opportunity to express interest in the three new positions.”

The required skills include the “ability to deliver programs and the ability to provide help desk support” for seven new bricks-and-mortar library agencies. 

The three affected staff were not made redundant, Ms Kelly said.

Documents on the Goldfields Libraries’ website explain no job losses would occur when the library truck service ceased. 

As recently as last August the library released a bulletin claiming the current mobile library staff would “visit each agency regularly to oversee collection rotation, returns and reserves.”

The first of the new agencies opens on Monday.   

Housed inside preexisting community buildings, the seven new collections will be operated by volunteers. 

The library has denied the move to agencies is a cost-cutting measure and instead said it would improve community access to library material. 

Inglewood resident Gabrielle Hodge, who last year presented the library with a petition to keep the mobile borrowing service open, said losing the truck was a blow to her community. 

“The library truck has always been something I thought was a valuable asset to the community, especially having young children,” she said. 

“It’s a community hub, people who couldn’t drive or travel that far could go there and have a chat.”

She also worried the agencies’ collections would be much smaller than the truck’s 16,000 items.