Cape Town is to turn its city library into a centre of excellence with the help of the Carnegie Foundation of New York.

Unveiling the plans for the new Nelson Mandela Centre of Excellence, Cape Town's executive mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo explained that the central library is at present housed in the old city hall, which was not designed as a library.

"By investing R4-million in the conversion of the old drill hall in Darling street, the city will create an asset, which will provide the much needed and centralised space for a dedicated user-friendly library," she said.

Rennie Scurr Adendorf Architects have been appointed to convert the building and are at work on a design that will use the building to its best possible advantage.

The centre, which is in the east city precinct, close to the District Six Museum, the Castle and City Hall, is expected to open by August next year.

The Carnegie Foundation has awarded $2-million over three years to Cape Town's central library for the project.

The first installment has already been paid to the city.

These funds will be used to extend and significantly update the library's stock of books, to get additional personal computers to widen public access to the Internet and improve the staff's computer skills.

The computers will operate on the Smart Cape Project.

The envisaged staff development programme will have two components.

The first will focus on training in Internet search techniques and the second is a mentorship programme to help staff apply their newly acquired Internet skills.

There are 14 professional staff members at the central library, seven of them are qualified librarians, while the seven assistant librarians have 128 years of public library experience between them.

Mayoral committee member for health, amenities and sport Nomsa Mlanjeni said that of the 35 000 adult members of the central library, over 11 000 are tertiary level students.

Just over 91% of the library stock is adult material with the rest for children and includes books, periodicals, videos, compact discs, audio cassettes and records for the many users.

Over 40 000 people visit the adult library every month to use about 163 000 items.

Every year the central library issues over 100 000 non-fiction works and about 67 000 books of fiction.

In addition to these services, library users make over 255 000 photocopies a year.

"The Carnegie Foundation award is an important key to stimulate our city's vast potential," said Mlanjeni.

"This upgrading will attract even more users to our libraries as the central library will be able to share a far wider selection of material with other city libraries through inter-library loans," she said.