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Reading Chest & Coronavirus Update

Tuesday 24th March 2020

Just to let our members know that we are currently operating as normal, just a litte busier! There is a much higher demand for our services than usual due to schools, libraries and book shops being closed.

Our small number of office staff are lucky enough to be able to walk a short distance to work and not use public transport. We are rotating times in the office so as not to be in too close contact with each other. Any customer services that can be done from home are being done from home.

Our service is heavily reliant on Royal Mail also operating normally. At the moment, all seems to be okay – thank you to all our busy postal workers especially at Godalming sorting office!  We hope our customers can be patient if there is the odd delay in receiving their books at home. We always send out new books out on the day we receive books from home, so if you are waiting for more than a few days for books, please get in touch.

Also, we are taking a few extra precautions with our books as follows:

1. The advice on how long the coronavirus can last on surfaces varies from a few hours to up to 3 days. Normally the quickest turnaround that a book can get from one Reading Chest customer to the next with the post in each direction would be 48 hours. So we are now operating a practice where we do not immediately put back on our shelves books that are returned to us. Incoming books on each day are now all stored separately for another 24 hours before going back on our shelves to be sent back out to customers. There will therefore be a minimum time period of 72 hours before books are passed on to a new customer. (In actual life, the chances are it will be many more days than this as we have many copies of most titles.)

2. In addition to the above, we are constantly cleaning our book covers and following the usual procedures of washing our hands regularly and cleaning all office equipment regularly.