With groundbreaking of the new Walpole Public Library coming later this year, here are some features I’d like to see in the new building, if they could be fit into the designs this late in the process:
A Café
The idea of putting a café in a library has proved very successful at other libraries across the country. Just a few of the local libraries that have cafés are Watertown, MA, Boston, and Warwick, RI.
Having a café inside the Walpole Public Library makes a lot of sense. A lot of Walpole residents desire a downtown coffee shop. The new library will be conveniently located near downtown, and the café would likely be a major draw to the area. The café would bring Walpole citizens who normally wouldn’t use the library into the confines of the building. In addition, by leasing space in the library to a café, the town would have the potential to generate a tremendous amount of revenue, thus enabling the library to actually develop a very profitable revenue stream. The ideal library café would have operating hours that are independent of the main library, meaning it would have its own entrance and exit and would be open earlier than the library.
William Pierce of the Salina Public Library in Salina, Kansas wrote in a 1997 article that “library cafés may have a role in making public libraries more inviting and user friendly to visitors.” Pierce calls on librarians to let go of their fear of letting food into the library, and suggests that allowing food and drink would actually have little impact on the cleanliness or condition of the materials.
Robin Henderson writes in this 1998 article that “those libraries that have already implemented this type of food service in their library have had positive feed back and feel that there is a slight increase in the traffic at the library.” Henderson writes further, “we want to lure in patrons and hope once they have discovered the library they will come back.”
Having a café in the Walpole library would benefit the library tremendously, but unfortunately it is probably too late in the design process to plan for a café. It’s unfortunate we didn’t think of this sooner. I see no downside to allowing a café into the building.
Rooftop space
The new library will really hurt the downtown area around July 3, when thousands of people flock to the municipal buildings complex for the Night Before the Fourth Celebration. Hundreds of people usually sit and watch the fireworks on the site of the new library, and the building will block the view of hundreds of others who usually watch from nearby. Event organizers will undoubtedly have to figure out other logistics for the fireworks in the future, including perhaps shutting down East Street so that people can watch from that street. Town officials should be very worried about the impact that the new library will have on the July 3 festivities.
Rather than having the library as an obnoxious obstacle, it might be reasonable to consider instead allowing the mobs of people that will be displaced from their usual fireworks-watching locations to sit on the library roof to watch – yes I’m serious about that. The library should develop the roof with space for people to watch the fireworks. The roof would be a prime location to watch, and the Friends of the Library could even generate revenue by selling tickets at a nominal fee for this prime rooftop seating (seriously.) There is likely quite a market for this, given that hundreds of people will have no place to watch the fireworks anymore and the view would be incredible.
It’s not clear how this would impact the new library’s intent to have a “green roof.”
Archival vault
The town currently does not have a secure location to store its valuable historical documents that date back to the town’s founding. Many of these documents are held by the Town Clerk’s office in a vault that is not temperature-controlled and is not, by any archivist’s standards, an adequate space for historical documents to be stored. Other very rare and important files are stored at the Deacon Willard Lewis House under the care of the Historical Society. However, that house, too, is not temperature-controlled, nor is it immune to fire.
The town needs a central location to keep documents that relate to the town’s rich history. The new library should include a temperature-controlled vault so that the town can feel good about the safety of its archives. The town has no funding to build a vault at Town Hall, so the opportunity to get a new vault is with the new library.
Supposedly, the town is already working on arranging the placement of a vault in the new library, and I urge planners to continue this initiative.
