Library looks to improve parking

On Monday, the Gibson Memorial Library board began discussions regarding improving parking onsite.

“I think we have horrible parking and the more we encourage programming and stuff like that, the more it’s going to get worse,” said vice-president Connie Maxson. “I’d like to see if we couldn’t find more parking.”

Library director Gabriel Chrisman agreed, saying, “Parking is a challenge that various people have talked to me about.”

The board discussed possibly buying a nearby property and tearing down the structure for parking. However, said property is already under contract.

Another idea brought forward was incorporating angle parking on Maple Street.

“Putting some angled parking there in front of the whole property of the library would give us several more parking places,” Maxson said.

Chrisman thought this idea could be incorporated into the library’s tentative outdoor structure plan.

“It might be a project to do at the same time as building the outside structure,” Chrisman said. “The city would already be involved potentially in providing sidewalk access to that structure, so that’s something that I would be happy to discuss with [the city].”

The library board is slowly moving forward with plans for the outdoor structure. Loosely based off the outdoor structure the library in Clarinda built a few years ago, Chrisman said plans were being drawn.

“In order to move forward from this point, I need a more solid plan for what it’s going to be,” Chrisman said. “We’re planning to at least do cedar posts and brick around the bottom to tie it to the building.”

Library board president Ann Coulter explained the process.

“[We need] a solid plan, it goes to the board, the board votes, it goest to the city and they approve it or not,” Coulter said.

The board said they would like to see the project completed before next winter.

In addition to the construction plans, the board shared results from recent improvements.

“We basically repackaged our kids’ story books with CDs in them,” Chrisman said. “They used to be packaged in bags hanging in strange places in the children’s area so people never checked them out. We read them so there’s a CD sleeve inside the cover and we also set up an existing CD player and some new sets of kids’ volume-limited headphones. It’s been used pretty well already and those books have circulated more.”

The library also added a new display shelf at the top of the stairs. Chrisman said the first display was very successful.

“Our inaugural display was the Blind Date with a Book Program,” Chrisman said. “It went really well. We had 51 books checked out off that display by 21 people. We’re going to try to move forward with that doing different themes.”

The board shared circulation and attendance has been up in the last month.

“We’ve had a slight uptick in the library attendance and visits, despite icky weather, which is a nice sign to see,” Chrisman said. “We’ve had significantly more use of the meeting rooms and a lot of reservations going forward. I hope we can keep that ramping up a bit.”