South Regional Video

We have just added a short video showing the site where the South Regional Library will be located.  Select the South Regional Page on the right.

South Regional Groundbreaking

To see images of the South Regional Library groundbreaking, select the South Regional page on the right under Pages.

Pictures of Southwest Before Renovation

To see images of the Southwest Library before renovation, select the Southwest page on the right under Pages.

Main Library Planning Progresses . . .

 

Over the past few months, Library and County Engineering staff worked with architects and community members to craft a program plan for the renovation of the Main Library.  We are seeking additional input from the Board of Trustees, County Administration, and County Commissioners. When finalized, the program plan will form the basis of a design and construction project to complete a renaissance of regional library services that began a decade ago.

 

Public comments from the July 29 meeting are posted at:

http://www.durhamcountylibrary.org/news/pr/main_meeting_2008_07_29.pdf

In addition to verbal comments people made at the meeting, you can read what people wrote down in response to these questions:

 

1.  What is the best role of the Main Library in the Durham County Library system?

2.  How can the Main Library better relate to the city?

3.  What is the one thing you would change at Main Library?

4.  Other comments

 

Second Community Meeting on the Main Library

Last Thursday evening, SmithGroup architects Chris Brasier and Bill Ash, along with consulting library architects Ed Lazaron and Jeffrey Scherer, presented concepts for ways the Main Library could be renovated.  A good summary of that meeting was posted by Kevin Davis on his blog Bull City Rising.  See http://www.bullcityrising.com/2008/09/library-forum-r.html.

The PowerPoint slide show is now available at http://www.durhamcountylibrary.org/news/pr/2008_0925%20DCL%20Public%20Mtg.pdf.  You’ll see some very interesting visual depictions of ways the Downtown Loop could be reconfigured, and we may learn other ways once a study gets under way by the City of Durham in a few months.  In addition, you’ll see concepts for replacing the two entrances with a single entrance on the Liberty Street side, some great photos of program ideas such as study rooms, casual reading areas, special graphics and creative play areas in the Children’s Library, Teen Zones, etc.  Enjoy!

A final report will be presented to the Board of County Commissioners later this year.

Communication To & From the Community

Members of the Durham community are providing lots of input for County staff, including Library and Engineering staff, and our architect consultants.  Thank you!

Our architects will share the information they have gathered at the forum this Thursday – 5:00-6:30pm, Main Library Auditorium. Chris Brasier of SmithGroup, Inc. describes the process as one of listening and refining. The architects heard what staff and the public had to say about what we would like to see in the new Main Library. They have taken that information and have begun to put together the building blocks of the program plan. On Thursday they will present what they’ve learned and will take additional feedback in order to further refine the plan.

The architects have not given us materials in advance of Thursday’s forum, however the slideshow will be available online at some point after the meeting. The slideshow from the first forum is on our website at http://www.durhamcountylibrary.org/news/pr/2008_07_29%20DCPL%20Public%20Meeting_sm.pdf.

See you soon!

One More Community Meeting @ Main Library

Join us Thursday, Sept. 25 from 5:00 to 6:30pm at the Main Library auditorium to hear what our architects have learned from you and from their study of the Main Library.  It’s another chance to give your suggestions and ideas for what you want in the renovation.  See you in a few weeks!

Main Library Planning & Programming

The community meeting about Main Library will take place tomorrow from 5:30 to 7:00pm at the Main Library Auditorium. The meeting will be divided into two parts:

(A) Presentation by the great architects who are working with us to understand our existing building and site, and

(B) Listening to the community members who assemble to hear what you feel is important as we develop this Library as a Place for our community to meet, to study, to learn, to bring our children, to connect with the world of information and ideas in these packages called books, CDs, DVDs, and nowadays, electrons flowing through the wires and airwaves that form the Internet.

On Wednesday, our architects will be conducting focus groups from dawn ’til dusk with groups such as the Business community, the Faith community, Homeless and Poor people, the Hispanic/Latino community, Neighborhoods, Parents of young children, Seniors, and Teens. All this engagement with Durham people is to learn what our community wants and needs in its Main Library.

Should we even call it the Main Library any more? Over the past five years, we’ve planned and built a Regional Library System, with a full service library within five miles of every Durham County resident. East Regional Library and North Regional Library are the first of what will be four regional libraries. They are wonderful! If you haven’t visited one or both of them, you must!!! And if you haven’t visited the historic Stanford L. Warren Library, that’s one of the 10 Things to Do Before You Die. Seriously. It’s a treasure!

So if we’re a regional library system, should our downtown library be called the Central Library? Our regional libraries are 25,000 square foot facilities, while our existing Main Library is a 65,000 square foot building. So what distinguishes it from the regional libraries? What do we all want and need this Library to be?

I look forward to seeing many of you tomorrow and Wednesday!

Bull City Rising Blog entry pertaining to the Main Library Planning.

Vernon Jordan

One of my colleagues at Durham County Library, our Assistant Director for Administrative Services, Joyce McNeill, recently met Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. I asked another of our staff members, a young African-American man, if he knows of Vernon Jordan. No, he said, he had never heard of him. I said, “Well, I’m going to read his book, which is called Vernon Can Read!, and it would be pretty cool if you’d read it too, and we can discuss it.”

                
Vernon Jordan is of course one of the great civil rights leaders of our time. Among many, many accomplishments, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Urban League, Chair of President-Elect Clinton’s transition team, and Georgia Field Director of the NAACP when Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes were the first African-Americans admitted to the University of Georgia.

When Ms. McNeill met Mr. Jordan following a speech he gave at the American Library Association conference, they talked awhile and learned of a number of mutual acquaintances here in Durham, such as the late John H. Wheeler, Dr. John Hope Franklin, John W. Edwards, and Benjamin Ruffin. Jordan gave the eulogies for both Edwards and Ruffin in recent years.

Jordan has for many years served on the boards of directors of companies and foundations including Xerox, Revlon, American Express, and Lazard Freres investment banking firm, where he is Senior Managing Director. He has been with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld since the early 1980s and currently serves as Senior Counsel.

Vernon Can Read!: A Memoir not only tells the captivating story of his life through the early 1980s. This book distills his wisdom, his integrity, his leadership, and his understanding of the forces of history and all that the black community in America has done to overcome a tragic and burdensome past, as well as what is still undone.

Jordan has written another book, which will be published later this year, called Make It Plain: A Life of Public Speaking. I can’t wait!

Southwest Library Community Meeting Tuesday!

Cherry Huffman Architects are finishing up plans for the Southwest Regional Library renovation & expansion to 25,000 square feet by 2010.  Our architects for this project are Laura Battaglia and Louis Cherry.

Join us Tuesday, July 15 at 7:00pm at the Southwest Branch Library meeting room to learn more about design plans.