Ready to grow

Deborah Fout loves a big construction project. As evidence, the Homewood Public Library executive director still has her hard hat from the library’s last major construction, in the 1990s.

In 2019, the library will take on its next big project.

The Homewood City Council has approved $1.4 million for the library to build an addition on the west side of the building at 1721 Oxmoor Road, near Ridge Road, as part of the city budget for the 2019 fiscal year. Fout has made the request for this addition for a couple years, but now she has gotten the green light.

“We’re real excited about it,” Fout said.

“It’s been greatly needed,” Library Board President Paul Doran said.

The 3,000-square-foot addition will be built connecting to the existing adult department, with at least one wall being opened up to allow for access. The addition will be the new home of the computer lab, currently housed in the library’s lower level, as well as study rooms.

Depending on the layout, Fout said there may be some room for a few additional bookshelves or comfortable seating areas.

Fout said the rooms vacated by this move will be used for storage and additional meeting space.

The library received about 667,600 visitors in 2017 and about 41,400 public computer sessions, according to the library’s most recent annual report. Moving the computer lab and its three employees upstairs will allow additional space for 24 to 36 computers, which can be used in programs such as the introductions to Mac or Windows products, or by patrons for tasks like job hunting and school registration.

“It will provide a very seamless experience for the patrons because now, if somebody has problems with a device — a laptop, an iPad, their phone or whatever — if it’s something that the adult services staff can’t help them with, they have to send them out to get help, which [means] they have to go down the elevator or down the stairs,” Fout said.

The addition will also include four new study rooms that patrons can reserve for solo or small group work, which Fout said they did about 1,700 times in 2017. 

Fout said the existing study rooms are small and not attractive, since they’re mostly concrete block walls. The rooms also only have one small window on the door, which leads to visibility issues. While there haven’t been serious problems with the study rooms, Fout said the lack of visibility could conceal patrons violating library rules, such as smoking indoors or damaging property.

“We don’t have a lot of observation of what they’re doing,” she said.

One patron recently set off the smoke detectors in the library by using an e-cigarette in a study room, she said.

The new study rooms will be glassed-in, and some of them will overlook the courtyard on the western side of the library. Most of the existing study rooms will still be available for one-person checkouts after the addition is complete, but Fout said one will be used as storage space.

“I know our patrons are going to appreciate those because they use those little [study] rooms up there,” she said. 

On the lower level of the library, Fout said some offices will be turned into storage after the addition is constructed, and the computer lab will be renovated and turned into a new meeting space. 

She said meeting rooms have been a popular service for local clubs and organizations, which can rent the rooms for a small fee. They saw about 3,400 community meetings in 2017.

“That’s just people like book groups or crochet groups or knit groups. You name it, they meet up here,” she said.

“It’s not a bit unusual for someone to call up here and we [do] not have space at the time needed.”

The library’s courtyard will also be expanded to offer more seating in a quiet, outdoor environment. Fout said part of the construction will involve relocating two memorials that have been placed on the courtyard’s brick walls to honor employees who have died.

“Even in the wintertime, there’s some people that like to take their laptops and sit out there or their books,” Fout said.

Wi-Fi access extends throughout the library and into the courtyard for people who bring their own devices.

Doran said the addition is a major step toward his goal of seeing the library be a “cultural center” for the city’s residents.

Though the library has not had a significant construction project in many years, Fout said visitor numbers have remained strong and steady.

“We’re consistently one of the busiest libraries in the state of Alabama,” she said.

She attributes this to the library’s programs beyond its bookshelves. The children, teen and adult departments put on dozens of events each month, special projects librarian Heather Cover said, adding up to nearly 1,300 programs in 2017. 

“There’s rarely a day when we don’t have something going on,” Cover said.

These events can involve everything from self-defense, crafts, coding and science-related activities for young patrons to technology courses, yoga and drink mixing nights for the adults.

“Our programs are, without a doubt, the most popular feature to our patrons,” Fout said, complimenting the work of the librarians in each department who come up with new programs.

They also offer checkouts of everything from telescopes to ukuleles and Roku devices, as well as in-library use of brand-new microscopes with some programs, starting in early 2019.

Fout and Cover said the NASA @ My Library grant that Homewood Public Library received in June 2017 has also been a popular addition, as it has enabled the library to put on astronomy and science-themed programs and movie showings. The grant was renewed and tripled its program money to $1,500 in 2018, Fout said, based in part on the positive response from library regulars.

In late January, Fout said, the NASA @ My Library program will bring a temporary exhibit to Homewood, putting moon rocks and meteorites on display. She said she’s looking forward to showing the valuable and rare bits of outer space to the public.

“This is priceless stuff,” Fout said, noting that a police officer will have to be on duty to protect the exhibit. “We’re planning several programs around having that, that people can come up and actually see something that came from the moon.”

 While the city of Homewood is covering the main cost of the addition to the library, Fout said the Homewood Public Library Foundation and the Friends of the Library are both planning their own projects in conjunction with the construction.

Library Foundation Board President Valerie Gordon said the foundation “stand[s] ready to assist however needed” with the addition construction. The Foundation has previously raised funds for a meeting room renovation, upgrades to the auditorium audio/visual system and a reading nook in the children’s department.

Though they’re not sure yet exactly what the library will need from the foundation yet, Gordon said she and other foundation members are excited about the benefits of the new addition and may be able to help with purchasing furniture, shelving and other materials.

“We’re always looking for ways to fulfill our mission to enrich the Homewood Library,” Gordon said.

The addition to the library is still in its early planning and design phases, Fout said. Construction could begin in spring, and Fout said it “shouldn’t disrupt the library function much at all” other than a temporary closure of the adult department when the wall between it and the new addition comes down. 

An unrelated project to replace some electrical equipment may also cause the library to close for a day.

For more about the Homewood Public Library’s programs and services, visit homewoodpubliclibrary.org.