This is a branch library in one of the poorer parts of an already depressed town, so they are wanting to use it as more of a free community activity center, and the community it’s in will need it.
The library is not gigantic. It was formerly a funeral home. But they did an amazing job fixing it up.
Some of the features this library has or will have soon:
- A test kitchen with restaurant-grade equipment.
- A workshop with a tool library for lending.
- A clean-up room featuring a washer, dryer and shower free for use.
- A playground and splash pad for kids.
- A huge patio deck for reading, relaxing or whatever else you might want to do.
- Just a pleasant place to hang out.
And, of course, the expected things like a children’s area, meeting rooms, a teen area, a small computer lab and a small collection of books and DVDs.
Before you start complaining about how “libraries don’t have books anymore!” The book stacks are still a 10-minute drive/bus ride away at the downtown branch. The books aren’t going anywhere. Libraries are more than just books. They are one of the few places the community can get all sorts of resources and a place to access them for free
Fantastic! If I lived in Terra Haute I would spend some time in there! Congrats on the opening and I hope the place thrives.
This looks amazing! Especially love the kitchen, workshop, and clean up areas. It’s great to give people a space to do things they don’t necessarily have the equipment or means to on their own. Which reminds me I should see if there are any publicly available workshops in my area.
Congrats.
Is Terre Haute really that poor? Not what I’d expect from the hometown of one of our country’s most premier private technical colleges. Usually a college contributes quite a bit to the local economy, and that’s a fancy one.
It’s a pretty tiny school. Only around 2k students.
Oh, I see. That is really tiny.
Average household income is ~$40,000, which is about half the national average, and there’s a lot of joblessness, homelessness and substance abuse.
Rose-Hulman is a great school, but the school is outside of town and there’s no bus from there to town either, so they don’t go. We actually have three schools here- RHIT, Indiana State Univeristy and Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. The students of all of them rarely leave campus. And I don’t blame them because in general, there’s fuck all for them to do.
I love how you include a cleanup space. Very cozy 3rd place for people to hangout. Good job dude!
How do you continue to fund this though?
Primarily funded through taxes, but even the local Republicans aren’t suggesting cutting the library budget. They’re pissed off about the clean-up room because “it will encourage them” (while also complaining about the smelly homeless people in the library), but they also know the library here is super popular. There was a “we love our library” yard sign they were doing a few years ago and they ran out of signs. They have a summer community book read and they did The Martian this year and ran out of free copies.
Such a weird town. A lot of poor people, many of them without advanced education, but a lot of readers as well.
Nice! We need people like you all over the world
Not me, my wife. This is all her.
Keep fighting the good fight against ignorance and illiteracy!
I absolutely love this. Good stuff, man.
Thank you.
More books would be nice, but the rest looks awesome. A great place for the community.
I really wish Imgur didn’t block VPNs 🙁
I’m sure it’s lovely - congratulations!
No issues using Mullvad
I’m using Mullvad, too. I can almost never get a response from Imgur unless I hop exit nodes a bunch.
Hmm. Maybe it’s because I’m on mobile and it just redirects to the app
Mine redirects links to a third party OSS app (ImgurViewer), although out loads and shows embedded images directly. When neither the mobile app nor the external app work, I assume it’s the VPN. It could also be Imgur refusing to serve content to nonofficial apps.
If I hop around exit nodes across the country, or overseas, I can find a node where it works. It’s just usually not worth the effort.
Is that why I see that message instead?
How many people did it take to get this done? It looks fantastic for something that is just getting started.
A large number. Construction crews, architects, all kinds of stuff. The funeral home it used to be had to be gutted and remodeled. They had to do stuff like get rid of the embalming fluid smell in the basement. Plus all the permitting and stuff. She only told me a bit about it and because it’s been such an exhausting process, I haven’t really pressed her on details unless she offers them.
I do know that there was such a rush to get it open by yesterday that my wife was out doing things like spreading gravel with the maintenance people to get it done in time.
Well a hearty well done to everyone involved. And thank you for showing it to us. It is refreshing to see examples of people building up their community when the majority of news focuses on negative events.
Heeeey whats up my fellow hoosier. Cheers to your bookstore!!
Looks great fellow Hoosier. Terre Haute needs more of this.
I didn’t understand what imgur had become before I clicked the link and briefly thought the library had lots of copies of Twisters in 4k.
Very cool. Seems like it has all the things many modern libraries should pivot to offering where possible.
That looks awesome!
A few tips, based on what has worked in our local libraries:
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A story-reading space where parents or caregivers can bring infants and toddlers to listen to books being read outloud. Librarians, parents, and volunteers take turns as book readers. Hugely popular. Absolutely packed them in. One branch even built a hand-painted replica of the “Goodnight Moon” set.
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A separate, private space for nursing mothers.
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If the budget allows it, a phone charging station.
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Space for common government forms. Applications for welfare, disability, voter, and tax forms. If you can get volunteers to help, even better.
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Was going to mention tools, but see you already have it. In ours, you can check out shovels, saws, wrench sets, gardening tools, etc, to take home for a few days. It got so popular they had to move into their own space.
We love our local libraries.
The government forms are genius
That’s already generally a thing in libraries, thankfully. I used to go to get them from the library occasionally when I ran a sole proprietorship business (i.e. I was the only employee) in the 2000s.
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Libraries are the best shining examples of community service & thats the coolest library I’ve ever seen. props to your wife and who helped make it happen!
