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Lounging at the library

The opening ceremonies for the 2015 Canada Winter Games are two weeks away and the city's transformation is well underway.
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The opening ceremonies for the 2015 Canada Winter Games are two weeks away and the city's transformation is well underway.

As Charelle Evelyn's story in Thursday's Citizen illustrated, access to various civic facilities will be limited or non-existent during part or all of the two weeks of the games, particularly the Aquatic Centre, the Coliseum, the Elksentre and the Civic Centre. Yet it's the Prince George Public Library that will undergo the most change and disruption during the Games.

The public won't be able to access the top floor of the Bob Harkins branch from Feb. 10, the Tuesday before the Games, until March 2, the day after the Games close, because that area has been set aside as a lounge for athletes. The computers from SkyLab will be brought downstairs to the renovated Keith Gordon Room and the library's DVD collection and popular new releases will also come down to the main floor. Staff runners will dart up to the second floor to grab items from the shelves for library visitors.

Meanwhile, the top floor will be turned into a giant living room for the visiting athletes, with couches, TVs to play video games, watch movies and check out the live streams from all of the Games venues, and other amenities to make them comfortable. This will be the place where young athletes will mingle with like-minded competitors from across the country, forming the initial bonds that will lead to the beginning of lifelong friendships for many of them.

On the surface, this sounds like a strange use for a library, yet this is both the present and the future of modern public libraries. The two branches of the Prince George Public Library already are the city's community centre, living room, classroom and public hangout, all in one.

For those whose shadow hasn't darkened the entrance the public library recently, both library branches are almost unrecognizable. The exterior has changed little (except for the Knowledge Garden between Bob Harkins and the Civic Centre) but the interior transformation over the past five years has been startling. The Bob Harkins branch has expanded its teen section, upgraded its main public meeting room, improved its elevators, added new shelves throughout, constructed an architecturally dramatic mezzanine on the second floor to house an open-concept computer lab and reading space, moved the customer service desk to the top of the stairs and, most recently, installed new public washrooms. At the Nechako branch in the Hart, there are cozy reading chairs around an electric fireplace, thanks to the generous donations of a loyal library patron, and the entire front desk and circulation area has been refitted.

All of those changes, and there are still more in the works, including a long overdue upgrade to the main entrance at Bob Harkins, are about making the public library a more inviting space for all residents. This is more than window dressing. Community building and knowledge sharing happens in safe, publicly accessible spaces where citizens can come together in the real world, not just on Facebook. This is the role of the 21st century library, along with that age-old mission of lending books.

As if the library isn't going to be busy enough during the Games, its staff aren't just waiting for people to come to them, they're getting out into the community. From Feb. 10 to 28, the library will have a "pop-up" branch at Pine Centre Mall, open from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday to Saturday. Keeping in mind that school-aged children won't be in classes during the Games, the library's mall location will house various activities, including storytimes for the wee ones, drop-ins for the older kids, gaming sessions and computer instruction classes for adults.

Online, the library's website (arguably its third branch) has its growing collection of e-books, music, databases, historical archives and connection to the world's newspapers through Press Display.

Simply put, no publicly-funded institution has reconfigured itself as thoughtfully and thoroughly to fit with the changing times and residents demands as the library. That transformation will be on full display for visitors from across the nation during the Canada Winter Games, just one more thing for Prince George residents to be proud of.