A power outage has affected library services throughout Otago during the past two days.
Dunedin City Council library services manager Bernie Hawke said the outage, in Invercargill on Tuesday morning, affected the servers which run the Symphony library computer system used by Central Otago, Queenstown-Lakes and the greater Dunedin area libraries in Dunedin and at Mosgiel, Port Chalmers, Waikouaiti, Blueskin Bay and book bus services.
"The servers that run the system are based in Invercargill and we're connected with an internet link between Dunedin and Invercargill," he said.
"By cutting that internet link, it's affected our ability to access information on the system. So we've been recording loans in our back-up, off-line system which allows us to issue books, but not to check them back in. But because the books can't be returned in the system, they haven't been available to people."
The central library had a backlog of more than 3300 items yesterday, which was what it issued most days.
"It's been frustrating, but we've been making the best of it."
About half the books taken out were issued through the library's self-checkout machines, Mr Hawke said.
"We've had to backlog everything and, as soon as the connection with the server is re-established, it will all be reconciled."
PowerNet network operations general manager Gary Pritchard said yesterday afternoon the outage problem had been resolved.
However, server access to the library computer system had not been restored last night.
