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A place for book lovers This artist's rendering of the Medford library's interior shows the dramatic view visitors will have upon entering. The gates on either side of a bestseller-type display will be made from bronze. Construction of the new library is expected to be finished in the fall of 2003. Medford's new library, for which ground will be broken next month, is designed to be 'a warm and welcoming building' By MELISSA MARTIN Mail Tribune When you walk into Medford's new library, smell the freshly ground coffee beans, admire the soft chairs and eye the best-sellers, you might think the library is imitating Barnes & Noble Booksellers. But the reverse is true. "The Barnes & Noble-type stores are imitating the way libraries were 30 years ago - comfortable places to sit and read a book," said Minneapolis library consultant Bob Rohlf. The consultant whose resume includes working on the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a 48-million volume library in Cairo, Egypt, helped Medford residents plan for a new library. Construction of Medford's new downtown branch will begin in May and be finished by fall 2003. "We suggested putting the quick in-and-outs downstairs, the typical mother coming in with a 4-year-old and a baby in a stroller and wants to get in as easy as possible," Rohlf said. "But somebody who's coming in to do research or find a reference won't mind going to another floor where it's quieter." Folks who walk into the new downtown library will find a spacious children's department on the main floor, along with the adult fiction section, a glassed-in teen department and a Mellelo's coffee shop. There will be two entrances, one on Central Avenue and one on Riverside Avenue. The brick and cast stone building will be downtown's largest and the first in the state designed for both academic and public use. Medford will share it with Rogue Community College. Inside, patrons will find stately pillars, carved bronze doors and a quote etched in stone above the lobby, something similar to Henry David Thoreau's "Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations." They will also find comfortable chairs for people who like to be buried in a book. "One of our rules for designing a library is that we couldn't pick out chairs unless we sat in them at least 15 minutes," said Jackson County Library Director Ronnie Budge. "We've designed a large, open space where people can sit and read books in comfortable chairs. We call this the community living room." Reference and research materials will be upstairs, including nonfiction, newspapers/periodicals and computer and language labs. Unless they are reserved for college students, the labs will be open to all patrons. "We tried to achieve a warm and welcoming building, both outside and in," Budge said. "There are lots of windows for two reasons - one is so that people passing by on the street can look in and, hopefully, decide it looks so pleasant they'll want to come inside. Another reason for the windows is to have natural light inside, which most people enjoy." The new library will have 190,000 volumes - 178,500 from the current Carnegie library plus 12,000 from storage. But over time, the collection will expand to 270,000 volumes, Budge said. She hopes to add more books on tape or compact disc, more in-depth, nonfiction titles and more fiction titles by international authors. Most patrons won't be able to tell that the library is a shared facility with the college - the college's small collection will be mixed in with the county's, Budge said. What library users will find different about the new library will be the numerous electrical and telephone outlets, the sign of changing technology. "That's one of the reasons libraries are so expensive," said Troy Ainsworth, the library's architect with the Portland firm Fletcher Farr Ayotte. "We have to put power and data supply to study areas and tables, pulling all that cable and putting in all those floor outlets so people can have a place to plug in," Ainsworth said. The $18 million library will be built to last 100 years and strong enough to hold the dead weight of a quarter-million books. It will have an open floor plan so future librarians can rearrange shelving and study areas as needed. On Tuesday, Jackson County received a low construction bid of $11.9 million, nearly $2 million below the $14 million construction budget. As a result, the new library might have an outdoor reading garden and water fountain, items that were on a potential cut list. The 80,000-square-foot structure will be built on the block between Ninth and 10th streets bound by Central and Riverside avenues, two blocks south of the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater. There will be a 125-space parking lot on Riverside Avenue. The library will also share the new lot built across the street for the college. "People keep saying the Internet is going to drive people away from libraries, but that's not what's happening," Rohlf said. "Library use is up across the country." One of those users is Lynn Gladman, a Medford mother whose family reads dozens of books a month. She home-schools four of her five children, ranging from age 2 to seventh grade. "I'm excited about anything that has more parking," Gladman said. "I'm just sad it's taking so long to be built." Jackson County is building a new branch library to replace the 89-year-old Carnegie building at Main and Oakdale. County voters passed a $38.9 million bond in May 2000 for the main library and the remodeling or rebuilding of 14 branches. Reach reporter Melissa Martin at 776-4497, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.