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My wife has been working for years on opening a new branch library in our town of Terre Haute, Indiana. It finally opened! Here is an image gallery. It might not be what you would expect. [OC] (imgur.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This is a branch library in one of the poorer parts of an already depressed town, so they are wanting to use it as more of a free community activity center, and the community it’s in will need it.

The library is not gigantic. It was formerly a funeral home. But they did an amazing job fixing it up.

Some of the features this library has or will have soon:

A test kitchen with restaurant-grade equipment.
A workshop with a tool library for lending.
A clean-up room featuring a washer, dryer and shower free for use.
A playground and splash pad for kids.
A huge patio deck for reading, relaxing or whatever else you might want to do.
Just a pleasant place to hang out.

And, of course, the expected things like a children's area, meeting rooms, a teen area, a small computer lab and a small collection of books and DVDs.

Before you start complaining about how “libraries don’t have books anymore!” The book stacks are still a 10-minute drive/bus ride away at the downtown branch. The books aren’t going anywhere. Libraries are more than just books. They are one of the few places the community can get all sorts of resources and a place to access them for free

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

That looks awesome!

A few tips, based on what has worked in our local libraries:

A story-reading space where parents or caregivers can bring infants and toddlers to listen to books being read outloud. Librarians, parents, and volunteers take turns as book readers. Hugely popular. Absolutely packed them in. One branch even built a hand-painted replica of the "Goodnight Moon" set.
A separate, private space for nursing mothers.
If the budget allows it, a phone charging station.
Space for common government forms. Applications for welfare, disability, voter, and tax forms. If you can get volunteers to help, even better.
Was going to mention tools, but see you already have it. In ours, you can check out shovels, saws, wrench sets, gardening tools, etc, to take home for a few days. It got so popular they had to move into their own space.

We love our local libraries.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The government forms are genius

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

That's already generally a thing in libraries, thankfully. I used to go to get them from the library occasionally when I ran a sole proprietorship business (i.e. I was the only employee) in the 2000s.