Looking Forward to a Great 2014 at the Library
January 3, 2014 — The library had a banner year in 2013, being named Missouri Library of the Year; celebrating two week-long series about the Civil War; bringing authors Avi and Margaret Stohl; and unveiling plans for a major Brentwood Branch Library renovation, to name a few. Here’s a sample of what’s ahead for you at the library in 2014:
- We want to know what you like, want and need from library services, so we’ll conduct community surveys of frequent visitors and people who don’t yet use library services.
- We’ve expanded daily hours and added Saturday hours for computer classes at the Edge Community Technology Center in the lower level of the Midtown Carnegie Branch. These free classes for adults include tutorials at a pace you control, in language you can understand. We can help you master Windows 8, too. Call the Edge at 837-5011.
- The Park Central Branch Library on Park Central Square will get a facelift with some new fixtures and arrangements to serve patrons better and enhance staff work areas.
- The Library Center gets a new front entrance canopy, remodeled restrooms and a wall to replace the accordion partition between meeting rooms A and B – making more sound-proof rooms.
- iPads will be available at the Library Center for in-house checkout as a pilot project.
- “Dewey-lite?” The Park Central Branch will organize its book collection into general topics while keeping Dewey Decimal System numbers within the topic. Example: gardening and landscaping books, usually shelved in separate areas, will be grouped together but each in its Dewey numerical order. Other branches will follow later. It should make browsing easier but enable you to find a specific book by its Dewey number.
- You’ve got smartphones; we’ll offer classes on how to work them.
- The Library Station and Willard Branch Library will get more public computers; the Edge Mobile lab will get more MacBooks and every branch will enjoy expanded Internet bandwidth.
- In April, The Big Read celebration of “The Call of the Wild” will bring keynote speaker Don Mann, a former SEAL trainer and author of “Inside SEAL Team Six: My Life and Missions with America’s Elite Warriors.”
- The Friends of the Library will return with the annual Spring Book Sale April 29-May 4; and the Fall Book Sale Oct. 21-26.