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Douglas County libraries may turn into 'reading rooms' Friday Feb 24, 2017 at 12:01 AM By Carisa Cegavske The News-Review ROSEBURG — Douglas County will seek intergovernmental agreements with local cities, allowing the branch libraries to keep the county’s books, but not check them out. The Douglas County Board of Commissioners Wednesday voted to pursue the agreements, which would turn library branches into reading rooms rather than lending libraries. All the library system’s branches, except for Roseburg’s, are housed in facilities owned by the city governments, but the books belong to the county. All the branches except Roseburg are slated to shut down April 1 after voters rejected the formation of a library district last November. Commissioner Gary Leif said the county intends to pull back its computers, including the software that operates the library system’s catalog. The Roseburg branch is slated to close at the end of May. Meanwhile, the county is taking applications through Friday for membership on the Library Futures Task Force, which will be charged with coming up with ideas for rescuing the libraries. The intergovernmental agreement issue was not on the agenda for Wednesday. Commissioner Chris Boice said Leif could have made the choice about the agreements on his own as the library liaison, but it was more transparent to bring it up at a meeting. Leif also mentioned that it is too late for Reedsport to form a local library district, but said he would continue working with library supporters there to come up with a solution. Reedsport voters approved formation of a countywide district in November, but were outvoted by the rest of the county. Reedsport supporters had hoped to put a library district covering just the Reedsport area on the May ballot, but won’t be able to meet the deadline.