Downtown Pensacola Library staff ready for grand-opening of expanded facility

When I was a little guy I can remember going to the library when it was downtown in the "Old Christ Church.. We got dressed up when we went. It was a big deal to go the library. Ms Lucia Tryon was the head librarian. It was big, very quiet, no talking, you could whisper some but if you tried to chat, Ms Tryon would give you a evil stare. Card Catalogs, Dewey decimal system, ladders that you moved to reach the books on the top shelves. Heck of a place. Good memories.

The Christ Church congregation moved to their current home on Wright Street in 1903, taking with them the Pilcher and Sons pipe organ. (The organ would later be sold to Gadsden Street Methodist Church.) The last service in the old building was on Good Friday, while the Easter Sunday service was held in the new church.

After the move, Old Christ Church became neglected from disuse. It was deconsecrated in 1935 and deeded to the City of Pensacola in 1936, at which time it became the city's first public library. In 1959, the library moved to its downtown branch, and Old Christ Church became the home of the Pensacola Historical Society. On May 3, 1974, Old Christ Church was added to the United States National Register of Historic Places

It’s been a $7.7 million undertaking, decades in the making, Roper said. The library has not seen an expansion since 1967 when it grew to 26,000 square feet.

Today, the gleaming new building has since been expanded to 51,000 square feet.

I spend hours on the laptop with my granddaughter exploring the world. I want to take her to the library, but I find these type of expenditures when the digital world has grown and allows content to be displayed in any home in America to be a tremendous waste of societal resources on brick and mortar and dusty books which sit for decades without even being looked at. I went through a local high school library, and saw most books had not been checked out for 30 years. When was the last time you saw a young person walking on a sidewalk with a handful of books?

This is a huge priority fail.....we should have been making sure books were available online to folks. A 10,000 square foot facility with a few hardcopy books and computer terminals......with Kindles handed out to every child at age 5, to be returned and rechecked out every 90 days. Longterm the cost of maintaining this white elephant and the number of children the library serves makes this a huge fail.......but brick and mortar.....50k feet of space make sense to somebody.

Good point. But why did we build a 18 million dollars Studer stadium when they have all the games on television? No need to go to a game, heck the best seats are in your living room.
Libraries are also used for social gathering, to meet people who share the same interests that you do. There are many people who like the hands on experience of looking at the shelves of books, to try and explore something new. It is not all about the children, sometimes community's build things that benefit every one. For me, I will use the library more that I will the Community Maritime Park. Everything is not about dollars and cents.......

I have spent more time in libraries than probably anybody on this forum, but my point is that the library is a place for information. If our goal is to give information to the largest percentage of our children then building a 51k square foot brick and mortar monument is not the best way to do it.

A baseball Park which cost twice as much as this Library brings people to the game, and the scale of the park is consistent with the demand. I have 25% interest in a 50K foot industrial building and do you realize how large that floor space is? Do you realize the cost to heat and cool that space, and to man the facility with personnel will be over the next 50 years. A Kindle is less than a 100 bucks if bought in quantity. For an intital investment of $500,000 every citizen who wanted to check out any book ever written could simply go down and be given a kindle. Now if you equate reading a book on paper or reading an electronic book as the same distinction of going to a baseball game versus watching it on tv......well it is obvious you will not be going to baseball games.

This library in 50 years will cost the taxpayers 10 fold what maritime baseball stadium will cost taxpayers. We are strictly talking about the stadium and not the open land of the park. The library will have this mass liability and no revenue flow.....and probably 1% of Pensacola residents will utilize the building.....but a kindle will open the world to a child.

It is not all about "Information". Library's also serve as a meeting place, and place where people can inter act and exchange information. Not every one has a nice environment to study or just find quiet time. Some things are just for the public welfare. Does city hall need 7 floors of office space? I know they leased one floor of it out. But how about the Juridical buildings, with 12 foot ceilings, How much does it cost to maintain that? for what purpose?
The library system is one of the few "free" things that is open to every one.

I have a special place for the library. When I came home from the Army, I was lost. I had money but no direction. I spent many a hour at the Library, thinking, reading, writing letters, trying to get my self back together. For better or worse, it helped me over come some major issues.

Last month my daughter and I went to Fairhope, Ala to sight see. She is a software programmer. She got a call that there was a major problem with one of her clients. We looked up the library and found a first class operation. She was able to use the facility to contact her client and solve the issue. Something that would have been hard to do in the car or a Restaurant. The library at Fairhope left a very favourable impression of the city. BTW They have city wide Free Wi-Fi. First 30 minutes are free then a small charge for more service.
Maybe Pensacola can do the same............

I think you both make good points.

But I agree with Hallmark that a library is about more than just gathering information. It provides an important meeting place for the community. Unlike a baseball stadium, a library is open pretty much every day, all day. You don't have to buy a ticket to enter the library or check out a book.

51,000 sq ft does not sound that large to me. I think our library here in Huntsville is much larger than that. It seems so, anyway. And it's been fairly busy the times I've been there.

hallmarkgrad wrote:Think what a city would be like if we supported a Library with just half of the intensity that we do on gallery night, Blue wahoos,or beach concerts. Big money writing contests, chess tournaments, Poetry reading, People like Yellar teaching art. It could work if people wanted it to succeed. But it will not. It will continue to be whipping boy of all the failures of Pensacola. We like it that way. Party on and whine. Buy every body a Kindle. F a library

It does work in Huntsville. There are all kinds of things going on at the Huntsville library. And we have neighborhood branches of the library as well. There is a small branch within walking distance of our house. And that little library is always busy. Huntsville has a highly educated population and a vibrant art community. And our libraries are very much a part of the community.

I will note that Huntsville is larger than Pensacola. But really, driving around town here, it doesn't really seem so.

Here is the January calendar of all the things going on at the various branches of our library system.

http://hmcpl.org/events

Actually, according to wikipedia, the Pensacola metro area has a larger population than the Huntsville metro area. I think there are more people inside the Huntsville city limits than inside the Pensacola city limits. And that's what threw me off. But I know that just driving around town here, the population does not seem larger than Pensacola.

Pensacola----Pensacola is the principal city of the Pensacola-Ferry Pass-Brent Metropolitan Statistical Area, an area with about 455,102 residents in 2009

Huntsville----The Huntsville Metropolitan Area's population was 417,593.[5] Huntsville is the fourth-largest city in Alabama and the largest city in the four-county Huntsville-Decatur Combined Statistical Area, which in 2008 had a total population of 545,770.


But--Decatur, AL is in a different county. They have their own library system.

So really, if Huntsville's 417,000 people can do it I don't know why Pensacola's 455,000 can't.

hallmarkgrad wrote:Americans are damn smart people. We can do almost anything. The world emulates us. But we can not seem to figure out how to provide education to the majority of its citizens. Some areas, like Pensacola find it impossible to provide mass transit. Things that you would think to be simple, evidently are beyond our capacity to solve.

We do have a bus system here but I really don't know much about it. But I do not necessarily think that mass transit works well everywhere.

I went to the Hoover Library yesterday. I check out audiobooks on CDs and listen to them on my travels.

I am seeing the same problem where I am at now. The big controversy was that they could get a referendum passed to build a big new library, but nobody wanted to pass a referendum which expanded the operating budget. So like Pensacola they built this big brick and mortar monstrosity, but unlike Pensacola the people to operate the same was not approved. In over 60 years of using libraries at every level, I have never.....and I repeat never gone to a community meeting at any library. I have taken the kids to programs at the library where somebody reads, but never a meeting. We would use a corner of the children's section for the readings and there were simple chairs given to adults and the kids sat on the floor.

I use the Navarre Library which is very small but very effective. The library I use now in a small town is in the same building that Carnagy donated in the early 1900s, and it is wonderful. 51k square feet is about the size of 50 ranch homes in Milton. I would much rather see space saving moving shelves, steel mezanines, and book ladders than building 51k dollar liabilities when there are kids in Pensacola which do not have access to a computer. I worked with my 4 year old granddaughter on her letters this week, and she will have an auditory learning deficiency like her mother and my daughter, which means verbal instruction will be difficult as they are visual learners. So you adapt the information to allow a child to learn. This idea across the nation as we move to a digital age to build huge barns to stack books which will not be checked out is a good idea while we have no resources to bring early learning opportunities to children is a failed paradigm. We have the technology to reach these children, but instead we want to build fancy statues to a bygone era.

Yomama wrote:I went to the Hoover Library yesterday. I check out audiobooks on CDs and listen to them on my travels.

We've done that on our long trips between Huntsville and Northeast Florida.

Seaoat, I think that most school districts are now issuing laptops to all students. I know that they are here in Huntsville. I cannot imagine the number of dropped, spilled on, broken computers they must deal with. ***But on reading this article, they say that the damage rate from last year was not high.

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2012/07/huntsville_district_preparing.html

I went to the Hoover Library yesterday. I check out audiobooks on CDs and listen to them on my travels.

A perfect example of how the brick and mortar is not serving the public. If the Hoover library had a web site which allowed you to down load the same from your home....you would have saved the trip....they would not need to support these new brick and mortar monstrosities, and everbody would be saving resources.

All my friends who work sales over multistate areas where they travel use audiobooks on CDs. The Prius has a usb connection for the sound system, and you are going to see a simple download on a memory stick replace CDs which like the brick and mortar library of 1900s is going to be replaced by smaller footprints and cyber space methods of transferring information. The very idea that you are accessing non paper books confirms what I have been saying......We do not need to make libraries larger, we need to make them smaller but with a much larger presence in cyberspace accessible to all.

I think that most school districts are now issuing laptops to all students.

Yes....this is a very good thing. However, we have not had government efficiently use technology to save societal resources. The schools giving a computer to students is part of the solution, but we need to better utilize video taped instruction, we need to reduce as many as 25% of our teachers with this type of instruction which can be provided by the best and brightest who have a track record of success with students. You will still have labs, and you will still have most of your teachers, but this idea that a Jr. college needs to be building more brick and mortar when a student can learn from their home is a model we need to utilize.

Our police and fire protection systems are as archaic as the library system which stacks paper books and builds monster brick and mortar buildings. We have the ability to put a central monitoring system in every business and home in a county and have heat, smoke, video, and panic feeds which also utilize reverse 911 which could immediately notify neighbors when somebody had a problem. This investment would save lives and allow us to make massive reductions in public safety employees. However, we build 5 million dollar fire stations on PB on a barrier island when common sense would have placed the station on the mainland out of a surges impact and utilized newer technology which would allow quicker responses.....but no....we took the building to the supposed need, and we created another problem. The paradigm and established folks with their programs and paychecks are not about to allow their jobs to be cutback, or to have systems in place which might save lives and make their existence a little less secure.

I think online learning is great. Students today have resources that most of us on this forum could have only dreamed about when we were in school.

But I don't think a computer can always replace a teacher and a classroom of peers. I think classrooms are still important.

But I don't think a computer can always replace a teacher and a classroom of peers. I think classrooms are still important.

They are extremely important....but some teachers nationally in physics, chemistry, math, language, and history have proven track records where their students simply outperform others. We need to tap into these resources and make the best teachers available and to make successful curriculum available even to the lowest performing schools. So instead of 100% live teacher content, we certainly could evolve to a 60% model where the other 40% of instruction is taped from the best, brightest, and most effective teachers the nation has. The simple truth is that the quality of instruction on the south side of Chicago is very different from the quality of instruction in a high end boston suburb where students lead the nation in performance.

The biggest challenge facing America is reducing our public sector footprint, yet still being able to deliver the services. Large library buildings, new Junior college brick and mortar, and 500% increases in our criminal justice system is not working. Other nations are efficiently utilizing their governments and are pouring resources into their industrial base, yet we throw our hands up and want the good old days when things were made here, yet we justify the Pensacola Library as a good thing and do not look at the scope of this monstrosity as being offensive to common sense when technological alternatives which serve the people are needed.

Here is a video tour of the new library.
I must say, I like it.

http://www.pnj.com/VideoNetwork/2083641053001/West-Florida-Public-Library-tour

Seaoat, you're right that the quality of America's education system varies from one place to another. It's a huge problem we have. But getting rid of libraries will not fix it.

It's easy to blame every problem with our school system on the schools and teachers, but I am pretty much convinced that parents make the biggest difference.

Seaoat, you're right that the quality of America's education system varies from one place to another. It's a huge problem we have. But getting rid of libraries will not fix it.


I have never said a word about getting rid of them, just making them smaller and more accessible to the user base.....making monuments of glass and mortar do nothing to instruct our children. The Navarre Library is a wonderful small library where the portals to learning are available without the monstrosity of brick and mortar.....and may I add STAFF.

Hallmark.....I am sorry the baseball has been such a success as people voted with their feet and nearly sold out the first season contrary to what you and others predicted, but would it not be as joyous occasion if our libraries could ignite the same response from our children. I think libraries are essential, but not what has happened in the last 20 years in library development. All the resources are going to brick and mortar, and I go to look in their technology sections and they have computer books which are 15 years old and totally worthless. The local junior college had no books which could help me, and I turned to online courses and taught myself what I could not find in the library. Paper books cost money. They are static. They are expensive. They make little or no sense for a public body to be investing in the same. We still can have a core catalog of especially graphic presentations of art, geography, people and places, but you core book material can be efficiently conveyed in digital form, and Libraries should as the digital age advanced been scaling the size back with larger computer areas and very small book stacks. This is common sense, but should you not be getting in line for your seasons ticket next year......oh no....they may be sold out.

Yep Studerville will be sold out, Again. And Pensacola will remain one of the poorest places in the state of Florida with High crime, high unemployment, and low graduation rates. Play Ball!!...........................At least a great Pensacola Library as flawed as you say it is, stands the chance of helping someone better their life. IMHO A much better investment.. ..........