Just a couple of weeks until school starts, the library is bustling with activity.
Many of the record 4,100 who signed up for this year’s youth summer reading program have been filing in to collect their prizes. Children peruse through the vast children’s section, currently decorated in the reading program’s medieval theme. Tutoring sessions are being held in the back. Adults sift through computer catalogs and other children wait their turn to play games on computers. A woman sits peacefully in the magazine area, engrossed on a Nora Roberts book. Over in the graphic novel section, piles of books cover the tables.
The summer is the busiest time for the library, despite common logic that children are out of school and thus, have less of a need to use the library for book reports and the like. In fact, June, July and August are the most popular months because children aren’t in school all day and are looking for things to do to keep busy, according to Carl Cousineau, who is the library services manager. December is the slowest month, mostly because of the holidays.
With a circulation of 1.2 million books coming in and going out of the library per year, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the library is well-used by Pleasanton residents.
“People like the casual, social interactions that come with public libraries,” said Julie Farnsworth, who is the director of the library. “They have turned out to be a great place for that.”
“It’s like the “Cheer’s” bar,” she said in a reference to the popular TV show.
The 30,000-square-foot facility is bursting at the seams when it comes to shelving books. On a recent Monday afternoon, the check-in area was bombarded with rows of book carts as well as shelves filled with books.
“For every item we have, we have to throw away something else because there just isn’t any room,” Farnsworth said.
The library staff would gladly close the book on the current facility at the corner of Old Bernal and Bernal avenues if offered the opportunity.
“There’s a need, but exactly what will happen is up to the City Council,” Farnsworth said.
That’s because a vision to tear down the library and build a new one in a similar area would involve the current City Hall, which is just feet away from the library on Old Bernal. The City Council is expected to review plans for the library later this fall.
“We don’t have a specific date for that,” said Assistant City Manager Steve Bocian, when asked when the plans would go to the council. “Basically where we are is we received a draft report from the designer working on this project and that was reviewed by our library commission, but that report has not moved forward yet.”
Bocian said the city wanted to get a comprehensive review from staff and some of those staff members have been tied up with other projects going before the city.
“The main focus of what we looked at was how could we meet library needs in the future and that included a range of things: an expansion of the library building or building a new library,” he said. “We looked at the potential of building the new library where locations of current city buildings are located and if we did that, how would we relocate those buildings. It wasn’t really intended to be a master plan that looked completely at the civic center but rather a way of meeting library needs. There is not a specific plan in place.”
An architect studied the current library, its structural capacity; the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system, among other things, and researched whether the library could be renovated and/or expanded, Farnsworth said. It was discovered that a second-story addition couldn’t be built because there wasn’t enough structural integrity, leaving only the previous option or that of building a new library.
Farnsworth said while there is a possibility to renovate and expand the library, it would be difficult because the library isn’t on a large piece of land. Expanding it would mean eliminating parking spaces and possibly adding underground parking in its place.
Talk of the library’s future plans is important to local resident Corri Cooper, who joined the city’s library commission in March. After moving to Pleasanton from Aptos near Santa Cruz four years ago, Cooper said she wanted her children to benefit from her being involved in the community in which they live.
“We’re a family of avid readers,” she said.
The Cooper family, which also includes husband Mitch and daughters Amanda, 4, and Abbie, 7, are the type of demographic that frequents the library. To accommodate that population, about one-third of the library is solely dedicated to children.
The library doesn’t just loan books either; it has a vast amount of programs for all ages and also regularly hosts school groups for field trips.
“It’s a big draw–everything from book reports to parents wanting their kids to read,” said children’s supervisor John Mitchell.
“Even on days when we don’t have anything scheduled, it’s wall to wall,” added Sandy Silva, director of the children’s services. “We’ve had to hand tickets to parent for children’s programs because they are so popular that there are people on waiting lists.”
While the youth-oriented programs are in so much demand, library staff can’t add more because there just isn’t enough room to hold them.
“I would love to have toddler, preschool and older children’s programs all at the same time so busy moms could bring all of their children,” Farnsworth said. “There could even be prenatal.”
“It’s so much more than just books,” Cooper said. “People don’t realize the magnitude of services that are offered.”
The library has one meeting room and most modern libraries have two or three, Farnsworth said.
If a new library were built, it would be about 72,000-square-feet, which would be more than double the size of the existing one, which was built in 1988.
While the library is a huge hit with youths, it’s also attractive to seniors. A vast large-type collection is available for seniors in formats such as books, books on tape and books on CD. Cousineau said slots for a program that teaches seniors the basics of using a computer and the Internet are always filled up.
Also on the staff’s wish list are more computers, since the ones that are present are always being used. There are 20 total machines, 12 for adults and eight for children’s.
“We should have 50,” said Yu Too, who works in reference services. “Because we don’t have enough, we have to limit people to one-hour time slots.”
Future plans, whether an expansion or a new library, will most likely include newer technology that will help the staff deal with the backlog of books. RFID, radio frequency identification, is a technology that codes books with a microchip so that the books can be automatically processed, rather than the current system of having a staff member manually check the book in.
Take a trip around the library and you’ll find floor-to-ceiling shelves, which Farnsworth said sometimes makes it difficult for patrons to reach a particular book if it’s really low or really high.
It’s not just the library floor that is squeezed for room. Behind all the service counters that the average patron sees are the areas where staff members sit and perform various jobs behind the scenes. Some office cubicles are so small that a desk chair can’t complete a circle. In the circulation department, Mary Sindicic, who is the circulation supervisor, demonstrated floor-to-ceiling shelving units that move with the crank of a wheel that are used to conserve space.
“We just have to make sure someone doesn’t get sandwiched in there when we’re using it,” Farnsworth said jokingly.
Further back into the deep abyss of office space, more shelves are packed with books waiting in the queue to get a barcode and be processed to go out on the floor. It would make even the non-claustrophobic uncomfortable.
While the approximately 50 people who work for the library are paid staff members, there are a number of people who contribute their time who do so for free.
The Friends of the Pleasanton Library is a volunteer group that helps raise money by selling books to help pay for various library costs. There are about 400 people on the group’s mailing list and about 10 dedicate volunteers, such as President Nancy Bering, who has been with the Friends since before the library was transferred to the city from Alameda County in 1999.
“We raise money for the library for material and programs, whatever needs that we can provide, by having our twice a year book sale,” Bering said. “Our book sales range from $19,000 to 20,000, sometimes not even that much.”
In addition to the biennial book sales, the Friends have a shelf near the lobby area of the library where paperback books are sold on a regular basis.
Bering emphasized that the books they sell all come from donations, not from the library’s shelves.
“All of our patrons, Pleasanton people–that’s where we get them from,” she said. “I really think they go to Costco or somewhere like that, read a book and then donate it to the library. It’s great.”
The money raised goes to everything from supporting children’s programs, adult programs to purchasing furniture for the library.
“It all goes back to the library, there’s no overhead and no one is paid for this,” Bering said.
“It’s a well loved, well used library and if we had more room, we could do more programs. We’re doing the best we can with what we have, but don’t we always want something a little better?”
