Terms of Service

Updated 20 May 2025.

By writing and publishing these Terms of Service, we (Wilson House Library Pty Ltd) hope to make as clear as possible for our members what they can expect from us, and what we expect from our members.

Agreement to these Terms is a precondition for activation of membership of the Library.

We will make reasonable efforts to notify members of any changes to these Terms, principally by email. However, we take any continuing use of our services to be an agreement to the Terms as they read at the time.

Violation of these Terms without our permission may result in your membership being temporally frozen or cancelled entirely.

Borrower Membership

You can sign up for a Borrower membership with us.

Borrowers may borrow from a rotating selection of books in the Borrower catalogue.

As a Borrower, you may share the books they borrow from our Library with the members of your household, that is, your family, housemates, or anyone who is living in your home.

The person named on the Borrower membership is personally responsible for any late, lost or damaged books, and may be liable to pay certain fees under these Terms.

Any books that you borrow from us remain our property. You are not to sub-lease, sell or convert our books during the time you have them on loan.

Borrowers may have up to 4 books on loan at any given time.

Borrowers may borrow books for up to 4 weeks (28 days).

Patron membership

You can become a Patron with a quarterly or annual Patron membership, paid via wilsonhouse.com.au.

Patron membership renews automatically by default. You can cancel at any time before the next renewal date, and you can continue borrowing until that date.

We will automatically charge your credit or debit card when it is time to renew. If the payment fails three times, we will cancel your Patron membership.

If a Patron membership lapses while you currently have one or more books on loan, you may continue to enjoy the books until the end of the borrowing period for that order.

Patron membership is non-refundable, except as otherwise required by law.

Patrons may have up to 12 books on loan at any given time.

Patrons may borrow books for up to six weeks (42 days).

 

Picking up & returning books

When you place an order with the Library, you will automatically be sent an email with a confirmation of your order and a link for you to book a time to pick up your order within the next seven days.

If you have not made arrangements to pick up your order within this window, we may cancel your order.

Books are to be returned to the same address from which you picked them up.

The address for pick-ups and returns will be provided to members in their order confirmation email.

Ordinarily, we are only open for pick-up and drop off during the times provided for in our booking system. However, we may make exceptions where possible.

Upon request, we may waive the requirement for you to return books to our address, however, this always remains subject to our discretion.

If your pick-up dates or return date fall on a time when our Library is closed for business, we will notify you and extend your pick-up or return date in lieu.

 

Late, lost and damaged books

If you are late to return one or more books (that is, you do not return it on or before the due date), we will automatically freeze your account so that you cannot borrow any further books until this is rectified.

If you do not return your order within 3 days following the due date, you will incur a late fee of $10 per order.

If you have lost one or more books, you will incur a replacement fee of $20 for each of the books you have lost. 

While some second-hand books will have existing underlining or annotating, or some amount of damage in some cases, we require that our members do not further annotate or significantly damage the books.

Minor damage which does not significantly affect the reasonable enjoyment of the book (for example, dog ears, slightly torn pages, small stains) may incur a fee of $5 for each book in which it occurs.

Significant damage, which significantly affects the reasonable enjoyment of a book (for example, torn-out pages, major stains, major water damage) may incur a replacement fee of $20 for each book in which it occurs.

Failure to return a book or to pay one or more of the above fees within a reasonable time may result in the cancellation of your membership with the Library.

 

Collection

We should not be taken to endorse any or all of the contents of any given book in our collection, or of its authors or editors.

While it is our wish that books for children and adolescents people are generally age-appropriate, we recognise that each family will have different views about what is appropriate for their children to read. Parents remain ultimately responsible for ensuring that any book borrowed from our collection is appropriate for their own children to read.