Funds for building and renovation

Funds for building and renovation

Keywords School libraries, Funding, Buildings, Local governments, Students, Public libraries

Four students raised approximately $15,000 toward the construction of a new library for Columbine (Colo.) High School, the school that was the site of the 20 April, 1999, massacre. The students arrived at the high school on 25 December with the money that they had raised on a week long trip they called "The 12 stops of Christmas". The students, one of whom was a Columbine graduate, drove through nine states, making stops along the way to memorialize each of the student victims. A group of Columbine parents is trying to raise $3.1 million to rebuild the now-closed school library, where ten of the 13 people killed at Columbine were killed and where the two killers committed suicide. It has been decided to replace the library with an atrium and build a new library elsewhere in the school. It has been suggested that the new library be called a media center because many students equate the term "library" with the tragedy.

A new library on Metropolitan State University's St Paul, Minnesota, campus has a uniquely cost-effective plan. It will contain a branch of the St Paul Public Library. The university has raised over $2.3 million for the project from private sources and is now requesting $16.7 million from the Minnesota legislature. The 76,116-square-foot facility will be called the Metropolitan State University Community Library and Information Access Center. The plan is to open the facility 94 hours a week - more than any other public library in the area. If funded, the library is scheduled to open in 2001.

According to a consultant's report on San Francisco's three-year-old main library, it will cost more than $28 million to make the facility user-friendly. The 5 January San Francisco Chronicle reported that a summary of the study called the building "a significant piece of civic architecture", but said it has insufficient space to house its collection, wastes space, and has a confusing layout and inadequate signage. Among the recommended improvements were:

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  making the upper floors, now accessible mainly by library workers, accessible to patrons (for about $6.5 million);

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  building a bridge between the top of the grand staircase and the rest of the second floor (for $9-million); and

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  converting the nearby underground Brooks Hall into an archival storage area (at more than $10 million).

Currently the library has $3 million, but implementation of the recommendations will require raising additional funds.

On 21 January 2000, the Québec government approved $90.6 million (approximately $63.2 million in US dollars) for a new 33,000-square-meter Grande Bibliothéque du Québec. The new library, which will be located in Montréal's Latin Quarter, will combine the Montréal public library collections with those of the Bibliothéque Nationale de Québec. It is intended to be a multilingual library for all provincial residents. According to the 22 January Montréal Gazette, construction is scheduled to begin in January 2001, and the library is scheduled to open in October 2003.

The Akron-Summit County (Ohio) Public Library board voted 20 January to keep to its original plan of expanding and renovating its 30-year-old downtown main library rather than move to a new facility. The renovation is estimated to cost $50 million. The trustees had been considering a move to two sites that Mayor Don Plusquellic had suggested as part of his plan to create a downtown cultural district. However, the mayor apologized for holding up the library and encouraged the board to go ahead with the remodeling plan. The project will include expanding the library from 140,000 square feet to at least 200,000 square feet, including a 350-space parking deck. The library is considering a fundraising campaign to assist with the expansion and renovation.