"It will be a great asset to the downtown," Sparacino said.
"I'm excited they stayed downtown and that they enlarged their facility," she added.
Allen said they hired Office Movers, a Maryland-based company that is a member of the American Library Association, for the extensive moving process.
"We're moving everything out of the old library, except for furniture, which will be all new," Allen said.
Steve Gilbert, the director of special services for Office Movers, said that in addition to providing the manpower for the move, the company will also be measuring the size of the library's collections.
That information will help the library to plan for growth in a five-year period, he said.
"This is like a domino theory," Gilbert said. "This helps ease the pain for them, because the more and more a collection grows, the more they will have to shift things around."
Allen said that the library does not anticipate that it will be buying more than its 8,000 new materials a year just because of its move to a facility that is twice the size of the previous one.
"In the old library, we didn't have enough room for the books we already had, so we don't want to go and fill this new one up," Allen said.
In addition to books, library materials also include the ever-increasing collection of audio CDs and DVDs.
"Everything is for free, and anybody can get a library card," Allen said. "Penn State students are considered local residents and can get a card immediately."
The total cost of the new library, which more than doubled the size of the old 15,000-square-foot facility, topped $10 million.
Local municipalities provided $4 million, private donations $3.7 million, the state $2.5 million, the State College Borough $1,883,595 and the Federal Transit Administration, through the Centre Area Transportation Authority (CATA), provided $780,000.
CATA will move its offices into the ground floor of the new library.
Gilbert said Office Movers would begin physically moving the library materials Wednesday after they label everything to be moved and map out where they are going tomorrow.
"The entire job should take about six days," Gilbert said.
Gilbert said that the devices they use to help them move the library materials, such as collapsible carts and containers for especially narrow spaces, are kept by the library after the move is completed.
"The normal wooden cart takes up 8 square feet, but our cart will take up 5 square feet," Gilbert said.
