Civic
Public Library Restores Sunday Hours at All Six Branches
The change ends a three-year reduction, adds twelve part-time positions and takes effect the first weekend of August.
All six branches of the Riverside County Library will reopen on Sundays beginning August 2, the library district announced Monday, restoring hours that were cut in 2023 during a budget shortfall.
Branches will operate from noon to 5 p.m., the same schedule in place before the reduction. The district is hiring twelve part-time staff, eight of them at the Central and Northside branches, which together account for more than half of countywide circulation.
District director Camille Boughton said the restoration was made possible by a property-tax allocation that came in above projection for the second consecutive year, along with the expiration of a lease on a shuttered administrative office.
"Sunday was never a quiet day for us," Boughton said. "It was the day people who work weekdays could actually come in. Losing it cost us more than the numbers suggested."
Weekday circulation has recovered to roughly 94 percent of its 2022 level, according to district figures, but total visits remain about twelve percent below. Boughton attributed most of the remaining gap to the missing Sunday.
The district also said the Northside branch's public computer lab, closed since a plumbing failure in February, will reopen at the end of August with fourteen replacement machines.
Summer reading program enrollment closed last week at 3,180 children, the highest figure the district has recorded.
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