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New Oldsmar Library to Debut Soon

Cheryl Bentley/SUNCOAST NEWS

The new Oldsmar Public Library on St. Petersburg Avenue East will be open to the public on Jan. 2.

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By Cheryl  Bentley | The Suncoast News

Published: December 22, 2007

OLDSMAR, Fla. - OLDSMAR, Fla. - Window panes await screening. Palm trees stand braced by wooden planks. The parking lot lies almost empty.

The Oldsmar Public Library is birthing its latest incarnation.

This one, on St. Petersburg Avenue East, will be its best yet with a new building and all the high-tech gadgets required by modern media centers.

"We're excited and thrilled to death," says Library Director Roberta "Bert" Weber.

The new $5 million library has about 20,000 square feet, compared to the 7,800 square footage of the old one. It will boast a cafe, lanai, teen room, children's story-time room, large reading room and meeting room with a capacity of holding 150 people.

The old library was housed in the 1920 Oldsmar Bank Building.

The new one is brand spanking new, although it carries notes of old Oldsmar in its furnishings and Mediterranean-revival architecture.

Construction began in late 2006. As of mid-December, workers were still adding final touches, such as painting and laying flooring for the arcade and meeting room.

The new library will open Jan. 2. A ribbon-cutting ceremony will be Jan. 26.

The move

In preparation for the move, the librarians closed the old library on Nov. 10.

They packed processing and office supplies themselves. But they left moving books and shelves to professional library movers, who went to work Nov. 26.

"They take books off the shelves in particular order so they can put them back," Weber explains.

She sits behind a brand new desk in an office of her own that even has a conference area. In the old library, she shared her office with two others and had only one shelf of her own.

Now, in mid-December, the librarians are waiting for their phones to be hooked up and are still unpacking.

After the move, staff had to straighten all the books and check to make sure they were, indeed, still in order.

They also had to find places for all that stuff in boxes they had previously packed, not an easy task.

"It's easier to take everything out and stick it in a box than to take it out of the box and find a spot for it," Weber says.

Both staff and patrons were ready for the move.

Although a beloved icon of Oldsmar's past, the old building could no longer function effectively as a library.

"The collection was so heavy it was distressing the building's second floor," Weber recalls.

Too small

The library moved into the Bank Building in 1990 after a remodel of the structure, but the site did not serve its needs for long.

"We outgrew that building in 10 years time," Weber observes.

The old library was designed for a city with a population of 10,000.

Today, Weber says, Oldsmar's population is 13,500, but that number can swell to 50,000 during business hours because of commuters who work in Oldsmar.

They are eligible to use the library through reciprocity agreements with libraries in surrounding cities and counties.

The old library was suited for low-tech times when books were the mainstay of a library's collection.

Now, Weber says, the library can have five different modalities for a book: paper, audio cassette, CD, video cassette and DVD, although it is phasing out video and tape cassettes.

In the old facility, there were only four tables. "We could only hold a dozen people," Weber recalls. "This library is designed to hold probably at least 200 people."

Additionally, there was room for only six computers. The new facility will boast 20.

New digs

The 12 library staff members are delighted with their new digs. All have new desks, a luxury when compared to their old surroundings. "I had staff that had desks from the '50s," Weber says.

Oldsmar has always been a city that appreciates its libraries, Weber says. The city has had a library since it was founded in 1919, according to the Web site of the Tampa Bay Library Consortium, a nonprofit that assists libraries.

Its first library was run by members of the local woman's club. Weber is its third head librarian and the second one with a master's degree in library science. She came on board in 1999.

The new building's decor reflects Oldsmar's pride in its heritage. Photographs throughout the structure show old Oldsmar shortly after it was founded in 1917 by Ransom E. Olds, the auto industry pioneer responsible for the now-defunct Oldsmobile and REO brands.

Remembering the past

In honor of Olds, a model of an Oldsmobile will hang in the teen room.

Other reminders of that era include the old-fashioned street lamps forming an arcade in the center of the grand reading room and the Oldsmar chairs in the garden room.

The chairs are similar to Adirondack chairs.

According to Weber, one of the original businesses in Oldsmar, a saw mill, made the chairs and shipped them all over the country.

The blend of old and new in the structure sets the tone for Weber's vision of the library.

"Even though we have this big, beautiful library, we want to keep that small town feel."

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