Remodeled library ready for move in

With a wire fence surrounding the building, storage boxes sitting in the parking lot and workers in white hard hats coming in and out, the Davis Yolo County Library still looks like a typical construction site. It may be hard to tell, but the year-long renovation of the library is almost done.

The newly remodeled 14th Street library re-opens its doors to the public on Dec. 7. To do this, the temporary library on Second Street at the old Davis Indoor Skating Center (DISC) location closed on Oct. 3.The reason for the closure: the books from the temporary location have to be moved back to the remodeled site.

Therefore, DHS students will have to rely on the school library during the two month closure.

“Having the library right down the street was an incredible advantage for the students,” vice principal and librarian Stacy Desideri said. With the library at its DISC location, many DHS students didn’t visit the library as much as they did when it was at its old location, said Yolo County reference librarian and teen specialist Deetra Cohen.

While the library site by DHS has been remodeled, many students including sophomore Hana McHale, have done their homework in the school’s own library. “I like working with my friends on homework after school [because] it’s a quiet place where students can concentrate and get a lot of work done,” McHale said. However, she looks forward to moving to the remodeled library to do her homework there.

According to Davis branch librarian Jay Johnstone, after school the old library site was packed with students who socialized by computers and study tables, “leading to frequent complaints from other customers about the noise and crowding.”

Johnstone said that the remodeling was focused on increasing the numbers of public computers, increasing seating “especially for students after school,” and creating a “larger [and] separate” teen space to allow students “to socialize without disturbing others who use the building as a quiet refuge to study.”

“In essence, the building had to be re-engineered for the technology and behaviors of the new century,” Johnstone said.

While the two month closure seems long, Johnstone said that DHS students have a lot to look forward to, with “[a] Teen Space[which] will have computers in a separate room, along with … twice as many public access computers [and] a café-style area with … furniture [and a] beverage vending machine.”

Sophomore Mandy Zheng, who doesn’t “go to the library much” is excited about the new additions. “It’s taken a long time… but I think the additions are pretty cool,” Zheng said.

“[With] new colors, new furniture, cool new lighting, lots of new books and disks on the way, [the new library is] a bigger, better, faster ship now,” said Johnstone.

Pictures of the inside of the library can be seen on the library website at www.yolocountylibrary.org.