As the President of the Board of Trustees of the Hudson Area Library, I have been very involved over the past year with the design of a new library to be built in the Armory (State and Fifth Sts.) here in Hudson. This has lead me to be very interested in how libraries are changing to meet the ongoing revolution in how knowledge is stored, produced, and consumed, not to mention the broadening of the functions of the public library towards being community centers.
On a recent road trip to California and Arizona I stopped in fifteen libraries. In CA these included Palo Alto, San Francisco, Sacramento, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, La Jolla, and San Diego. In AZ there were Willcox, Phoenix, Tucson, Joshua Tree, Quartzite, Bisbee, and Yuma. These libraries served populations from over a million to less than five thousand. Some exceeded 250 thousand sq. ft. in floor area (your typical Walmart Supercenter is 191,000 sq. ft.) while others were less than two thousand. Some were only a few years old, most others had been renovated recently and one obviously unchanged for a decade or more.
Popular Library
As you entered the library the latest additions and most popular items are displayed as though you are entering a bookstore (though of course this experience is rapidly disappearing in the bookstore setting). My favorite example is the DVD section in Los Angeles main library, “Wrestling”. Typically very near the Popular Library and adjacent to the entrance was a section for books being held for patrons from inter-library loans. Many of these were self-help.
Teen Rooms
Teens almost universally have dedicated spaces, frequently accoustically segregated from other spaces in the library
Children’s Rooms
Local History
Technology Access
Every library provides extenstive resources for access to the Web. Most offer workshops on how to use basic computer functions as well as e-readers, tablets, and more sophisticated technologies like Photoshop. Some had additional resources for audio, music, and video including green walls.
The most unusual technology is the “The Expresso Print Machine” in the Sacramento Public Library (Central Library branch). This neat device prints a perfect bound paper back virtually on-demand.
Meeting Rooms
Programming & Services
Other