by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
Jacksonville Public Library Director Barbara Gubbin was born in India, educated in England and made her career in the United States, but her biggest move is still a month away.
The City’s new Main Branch Library is scheduled to open Nov. 12, and the City has already planned a grand opening followed by a week-long celebration. But the festivities can’t begin until the City moves furniture, office equipment and hundreds of thousands of books from the current Ocean Street location to the new building on Laura Street.
The move only covers about three city blocks, but it will cost $75,000 and take three weeks. Even for someone as well-traveled as Gubbin, this move presents a new challenge.
“I’ve overseen branch moves before, but not on this scale,” said Gubbin.
Before the doors open to the new, $95 million main branch, Gubbin has to oversee a process to fill 300,000 square feet of space, including a cafe, bookstore and 400-seat auditorium.
The City will move the entire 412,000-piece collection from the old building. The collection includes DVDs, videos, maps and virtually every other form of media. But the heaviest burden is, literally, moving the books. Several hundred thousand of them have to be cataloged, placed onto palettes and then into the moving van. It’s all of the complications of a normal move, but with the Dewey Decimal System thrown in for good measure.
Even after the old building has been emptied, there’s still going to be plenty of vacant space in the new Main Branch. It’s about three times the size of the old building. The Better Jacksonville Plan has about $5 million in the project’s budget to buy new materials to fill out the new branch. The new building will boast expanded sections for children, teens and genealogy as well as collections dedicated to African-American and Florida history.
The new materials are necessary, Gubbin said, to keep up with increased demand for library services from a growing Jacksonville population. The surge in demand has even outpaced Jacksonville’s growth.
While the City’s population has grown 11 percent since 2001, the circulation of library materials is up 30 percent over the same period. Library card holders are up 20 percent, while total visitors are up 44 percent.
Many of those numbers are being driven by the library system’s new branches, which have been greeted enthusiastically, said Gubbin. The new Pablo Creek branch is now the system’s busiest in terms of circulation. The Maxville Branch’s opening drew a crowd of a thousand.
Gubbin expects similar enthusiasm for the new Main Branch. She pointed out that the building wouldn’t have been possible except for the willingness of Jacksonville residents to pay a half-cent tax increase as part of the BJP.
“That’s a part of what attracted me to Jacksonville is the can-do spirit here,” she said. “People here saw an opportunity to improve the library system and they jumped on it and made it happen.”
The opening has experienced delays — the City once expected the building to be open in time to host Superbowl parties — but Gubbin promised the Nov. 12 date is firm.