Schlow Memorial Library opened Monday after a three-week-long move to a temporary location at the former State College Borough Municipal Building, 118 S. Fraser St.
The library will remain there while the original facility, at 100 E. Beaver Ave., undergoes construction.
Some people stopped in to see what the library looked like during yesterday's opening, but most came to return books. There were about 20,000 books due Monday, Pat Griffith, adult services librarian, said. Many people took advantage of the three-week move by checking out more books than usual.
Moving the library to the new location was a challenge, because the former municipal building was unfurnished, library director Betsy Allen said. "There was considerable difficulty. We were faced with 12 inches of snow and an ice storm," Allen said. "We had trouble getting the books and the shelving down."
The temporary location is slightly bigger than the East Beaver Avenue facility, but it is not laid out in a way that is efficient for a library, Allen said. The new location has space for both a meeting room and a computer lab, whereas the other facility housed both in one room. "I like how they have a lot of space, but on the upper floor, there's almost nothing there," Jeff Palmer (freshman-mechanical engineering) said as he visited the facility yesterday.
The setup of the temporary library is also different. The adult library is on the first floor, and the children's library is on the second floor -- the opposite of before. "I think it's very exciting. Children are very excited about everything," said Rebecca McTavish, children's library technician. "One child said to me, 'Everything is here,' excited that we brought everything with us."
The adult library only occupies a quarter of the area that it covered before, so it is less spaced out. As a result, the shelving is much higher, and there are more step stools than before, Griffith said.
Because of space constraints, only a quarter of the non-fiction section is on display for patrons. Non-fiction books that are not on display are in a staff-only section and are available upon request.
"In a way, we will have more interaction with people because they will have to ask us for more things," Griffith said.
Change is not always easy, and it can often be unsettling, but people are happy for the library to be back, Allen said. "It's amazing that you can just take an empty building and make it look like a library," Griffith said. "It's not the building that makes the library, it's the context, the people and the patrons. They all came with us."
Schlow will have a public open house Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., organized by the Friends of the Schlow Memorial Library. The event will include a violin performance, greeters handing out maps of the new library and story hours at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.
Library hours, services and programming remain the same as before, despite the relocation.
Library construction and renovation at 100 E. Beaver Ave. is expected to be complete in May 2005. According to the Schlow Web site, demolition of the Beaver Avenue location is slated for May.
