Celebrate Your Creative Spirit

Look how we’ve grown

ICPL celebrates five years in new building

The Iowa City Public Library is so much more than the building it calls home. It is a community gathering place committed to encouraging a literate and informed citizenry and reflecting the needs and interests of its people.

“In this building, for decades to come, information will become knowledge, people will greet friends and strangers, children will feel the thrill of discovery and the comfort of the familiar, and all will have equal access,” said Library Director Susan Craig.

Libraries are unique in their ability to link past, present and future. This summer, ICPL will look at how far we have come, where we are now and plan for the future as we celebrate the 5-year anniversary of the grand opening of our new building.

BE CREATIVE @ YOUR LIBRARY

The Library is planning several months of activities to commemorate this anniversary and encourages residents to explore their own creative spirit at the Library.

Authors Jay Walljasper, Sarah Prineas and Andres Dubus III will be featured at special author events and the Library will welcome its first author-in-residence, Jack Gantos.

The adult, children’s and teen summer reading programs will kick-off registration the first week of June, and reading program events will include everything from acting classes to journaling workshops.

ICPL is the official sponsor of the Friday Night Concert Series on June 12 in City Plaza and behind-the-scenes building tours will be offered to the public in June and July. A staff art exhibit will be on display throughout the Library during September.

Anniversary event information is listed at the Be Creative navigation links above.

LIBRARY USE

The first weekend in the expanded building, we welcomed over 4,844 people and checked out 10,778 items. Eager people still wait in the lobby every day to enter the building as it opens, meeting rooms are being booked, reference questions are being answered and thousands of children, teens and adults will register for our summer reading programs again this year.

When comparing fiscal year 2004 and 2008, meeting room use is up 344%, public Internet use is up 275%, visits to the Library are up 36% and total circulation is up 25%.

With more and more people taking advantage of Library collections, circulation through the first three quarters of 2009 was 1,145,119, a 5.4% increase over the previous year. By the end of fiscal year 2009, the Library expects to exceed 1.5 million in total circulation.

As Susan Craig said at the grand opening in 2004, “This library is a symbol of the values and character of our community. We built a grand space in the heart of our downtown for the most democratic of public institutions. The building speaks. It says we think culture and freedom and equality of opportunity are important.”

THE BUILDING PROJECT

In November 2000, Iowa City voters approved an $18.4 million bond referendum for renovation and expansion of the Library building that opened in 1981. On June 12, 2004, the ribbon was cut and people spilled through the entryway into the newly expanded and remodeled facility. It was only two days shy of being exactly 23 years after the first building on this site was officially dedicated, marking a significant milestone in the institutional life of the Iowa City Public Library. Architects for the project were Engberg Anderson Design Partnership of Milwaukee, Wis., and the general contractor was Knutson Construction Services of Iowa City.

The building project almost doubled the Library’s size as the Library grew from 47,000 square feet to 81, 276 feet. The Children’s Room more than doubled in size, a new area was designed for young adults, reading areas were added along with expanded meeting rooms and growth space for collections, 44 public access computers and a 16-place computer training lab made their debut and three self-service checkout stations added easier checkouts for cardholders.