Libraries weather hard times
A new, tax-cutting administration starting in 2000, the terrorist attacks of 2001, and the expensive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq led to several years of shrinking budgets and hard fiscal times for libraries large and small. Nonetheless, the number of visits to U.S. public libraries soared to almost 1.2 billion per year and reference librarians answer more than 7 million questions each week, proof that libraries have an increasingly significant role to play in an information-driven world.
Budget cuts notwithstanding, libraries have found ways to finance needed expansion of facilities and services.
Among the most prominent examples from the past five years was the Seattle Public Library's new central library, which opened in May 2004. Designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, the $165.5 million project generated a national conversation about public libraries as public spaces. The New Yorker magazine called the 362,987-square foot, 15-story facility "the most important new library to be built in a generation, and the most exhilarating."
Tight economic times did produce synergies, large and small.
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In San Jose, California, the new Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library - a collaboration between the city and San Jose State University - integrates the collections, services and staffs of two distinct institutions. The massive $177.5 million, 475,000-square foot project houses more than 1.5 million volumes and includes special collections such as the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies.
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A more modest collaboration occurred in Stanardsville, Va. There, the Greene County Library had long outgrown its 1,300-square foot home, so it formed a fundraising partnership with the Jefferson Area Board for Aging. The result was a new 25,000-square foot building with 8,000 square feet for the library, 4,000 for a senior center and the rest for county offices.
Libraries also managed to respond to local needs.
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The Los Angeles Public Library continued its plan to expand, renovate, and replace 32 branches, and the new $6.56 million, 14,500-square foot Chinatown branch houses the largest collection of Chinese-language materials in Southern California.
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A continent away, in Miami-Dade County, Fla., often referred to as the "Gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean," the public library system has been expanding actively into suburban areas such as Hialeah Gardens, where one of several new branches also is designed to meet the need of the local population, which in this case is 82 percent Hispanic (Libraryjournal.com, 2/1/02).
Some new facilities declared their modernity while acknowledging their historical and artistic context. In Oak Park, Ill., for example, the stairs of the new $19.4 million, 104,000-square foot Public Library wrap a glass-enclosed tube that extends to a rooftop skylight; a silent study area has a view of nearby Unity Temple, the first public building designed by longtime Oak Park resident Frank Lloyd Wright.
Other libraries simply refused to be penned in by circumstances: The Sandusky (Ohio) Library tripled its size through a $10 million renovation and expansion that blended the original 1901 Carnegie facility with the former Erie County Jail next door.
In the land of the Hoosiers, the Indiana State Library in Indianapolis underwent a $17 million renovation that also sought to improve accessibility, upgrade mechanical and electrical systems, and restore architectural features; and the Vanderburgh Public Library in Evansville undertook a system-wide $44 million building and improvement campaign.
In Baltimore, a $15 million annex adjoining the 1931 Enoch Pratt Free Library offers space for environmentally sensitive collections, a state-of-the-art computer lab, and additional public reading space.
In another response to changing times, libraries continued to outgrow the traditional definition of "library."
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The new $65 million, 240,000-square foot Salt Lake City Public Library, which opened in February 2003, doubled the space of the facility it replaced and includes a rooftop garden, an outdoor theater, a children's garden, a climbing wall, a reflecting pool, fireplaces on every level, a 300-seat auditorium, and space for shops, cafés and a public radio station.
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At the new 127,000-square foot, $36.8 million Southfield (Mich.) Public Library, interior themes reinforce the idea of the library as a place of discovery. The Storytime Space Station features an authentic spacesuit, and monitors that are hooked up to official NASA and related Internet sites connect kids to the latest news and information on space exploration.
Other key library facts:
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More than 75 percent of funding for the nation's more than 15,000 public libraries and branches comes from local taxes. About 13 percent comes from state funding, and less than 1 percent from federal tax dollars. (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2003 - http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2003399)
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