Library / NW 122nd & Mac

[Twain427]

Should this topic have been previously raised, I would appreciate a link to such. A search yielded no relevant results.

Apparently, the structure resembling a 1950's power plant off 122nd and Mac is going to eventually be a new library. Would anyone have information regarding the final design, etc?

From what I can see, it is likely to be one of those structures that 50 years from now someone will petition to demolish but will be protected instead and heralded as an architectural gem from the early parts of the century (which I would wholly disagree with).

Thanks!

[TheTravellers]

Should this topic have been previously raised, I would appreciate a link to such. A search yielded no relevant results.

Apparently, the structure resembling a 1950's power plant off 122nd and Mac is going to eventually be a new library. Would anyone have information regarding the final design, etc?

From what I can see, it is likely to be one of those structures that 50 years from now someone will petition to demolish but will be protected instead and heralded as an architectural gem from the early parts of the century (which I would wholly disagree with).

Thanks!

http://www.okctalk.com/showthread.php?t=21241

[Pete]

Video of the grand opening of this new library:

[Soonerinfiniti]

There are about eight parking spaces reserved for pzev or similar cars (low emissions). Full parking lot, except for those eight spaces. Inside it is pretty large, but I still don't understand why they put the internet users in the middle of the room. When did a library go from being a quiet place to read to a coffee shop, where cell phones, food/drink and loud talking were not only accepted, but encouraged. They have some study rooms, but they look like glass teepees, and there are not enough of them. Too much "design" not enough "function". Go the OU Health Sciences Library - they have a ton of small, quiet study rooms in a plain, boring, multi-story building.

[Joe Kimball]

I think it's safe to say that it's happening before our eyes; the paradigm for that sort of thing began when Barnes and Noble opened all of those stores, in my opinion.

They probably wish to monitor all of the internet users more easily, as that is the primary function of a library these days for many people.

It fills the needs of the majority of the area, in my opinion.

[Architect2010]

Local libraries are largely used by children/youth, leisure reading, community events, and those who wish to have internet access. If you're looking for a real place to study or are a student, then I don't suppose your local Metropolitan Library is going to cut it. I'd suggest sticking with your local campus library as those follow the more "traditional" form. Institutional, boring, and often psychologically stressful.

[LandRunOkie]

Local libraries are largely used by children/youth, leisure reading, community events, and those who wish to have internet access. If you're looking for a real place to study or are a student, then I don't suppose your local Metropolitan Library is going to cut it. I'd suggest sticking with your local campus library as those follow the more "traditional" form. Institutional, boring, and often psychologically stressful.

I've long felt that the library system should charge a nominal hourly fee for internet users over 18. Charging $2/hr would keep loiterers away. If they don't come up with some policy, eventually the new library will become basically annexed by local apartment dwellers and the homeless, and developers will build more low-end suburban apartments nearby to capitalize on the library in exactly the same way they did with the Warr Acres library.

They either need to charge people for internet and put that money toward buying more new non-fiction like us grownups like to read or incorporate "computer labs" instead of computers in public spaces. Libraries should be for learners not IM chatters and email checkers.

[kevinpate]

Never been to this new branch. As for quiet, it's sad it if is permitted to be noisy. I use the DT library from time to time when I am DT and have some time to kill between other matters. Maybe I am just fortunate, but I've always found it very quiet, even at the internet stations. As to charging by the hour, perhaps my memory is off, but I thought the OKC setup was like I've used in Norman and Tulsa and McAlester. You sign up and you have an hour of time at an assigned machine. If you want more, you sign up and wait again for a machine to come free. I don't recall having ever signed up to wait though, as I am usually either simply checking mail or reading something to pass some down time.

[LandRunOkie]

Maybe it is indicative of just how badly this new library was needed, but the Warr Acres library has gotten pretty crowded and odiferous in the past few years. Would still greatly prefer labs to a smattering of computers across the library.

[ljbab728]

I'm not arguing about the point about the libraries charging but the idea that apartments were built in the area of the Warr Acres library for that reason is laughable. Most of those apartments were built before the internet and computers made any significant impact on the general public. I also suspect that the the library didn't even have computers available at that time.

[mcca7596]

I've long felt that the library system should charge a nominal hourly fee for internet users over 18. Charging $2/hr would keep loiterers away.

$2 an hour isn't so nominal for the working poor when you're talking about a couple of hours a day, several times a week.

[LandRunOkie]

Im talking about this as a sprawl issue and the need for long term usage planning for public facilities. Instead of acknowledging that poor people will eventually use this library and designing the building for it, they designed it as a Borders. Of course people at Borders have jobs and hygiene at people at public libraries increasingly don't. If they used labs it would keep both groups happier and decrease the need for another library (164th and Sara rd?) in the future.