Despite positive library trends, post-flood circulation down 42 percent

There is some good trend news at the Cedar Rapids Public Library, but the latest statistics serve as a reminder, too, of why library lovers in Cedar Rapids are eager for the new $45.5-million library project to get built and opened in 2012.

Leon Green, the library's computer information services manager, told the library board this week that library use was 23 percent higher this June than last June and 30 percent higher for the fiscal year that ended June 30 compared to the post-flood year that ended last June 30.

Even so, circulation at the library, which is operating out of temporary quarters at Westdale Mall with a small storefront presence in the downtown, is 42 percent lower than the year before the June 2008 flood destroyed the city's main library, Green said.

Bob Pasicznyuk, the library's director, told the board that the design team for the new library, which will go up on Fourth Avenue SE across from Greene Square Park, is two to three weeks away from the creation of a “first round” of design schematics for the new building. The schematics will provide a good idea of where most of the components of the library will “land,” Pasicznyuk said.

By month's end, he said the cost estimators will bring their analysis to the drawings before what he said would be a public unveiling of the design by the end of September or early October.

On Aug. 18, the library will hold a special session for young professionals to get their take on what the new library needs.

A similar event for teens instructed the library design team not to try to take a stab at being “cool” because the team likely would miss the mark, Pasicznyuk said. The teens, he said, preferred that library spaces be “smart and sophisticated.”