Library Users will Find Challenging Months Ahead - May 2003

The Ithaca Journal
May 2003
by Janet Steiner, Library Director

If you are among the half million visitors to the library annually, you can be sure that you will find visiting the library difficult for the next year or so. The construction of new parking garage in the south parking lot of the library means that 200 parking spaces will be removed from action. A new sewer line will disrupt pedestrian access along the Green Street sidewalk. The Cayuga Green project is well under way, and library users need creativity, perseverance and patience in order to deal with the results.

Be prepared to discover that your favorite parking spot-either on the street, in the surface lot or in the Green Street garage-is already occupied and that alternative spaces are in short supply.

Here are some ideas which might help:

• Use public transportation. TCAT service is at our front door. Parents and kids might find that riding the bus is almost as much fun as coming to story hour!
  
• Ride your bike. Or try walking, especially while the weather is good.
  
• Come at off hours. The demand for parking evenings after 6 and weekends may be less than during business hours. We'll keep you posted on our website.
  
• Car pool.
  
• Explore the other public libraries in Tompkins County: Newfield, Groton, Dryden and Trumansburg are chartered independent libraries offering a full array of library services. The community libraries in Danby, Caroline and Lansing offer personal service staffed by excellent volunteers. You can return our books to those locations. You might even find that the wait for a bestseller is shorter there than it is here. And-probably no parking problems!

Visit our virtual library by going to our website www.tcpl.org You can e-mail us a reference question, check your account, renew library materials, place items on hold, and use many of our licensed data bases. You can receive a "Chapter A Day" e-mailed to your account.

The library will be changing the loan period of our new fiction books from one week to three weeks, so that you will have more time to finish that bestseller and more time before you need to return it.

The library offers a two day grace period for over due materials. We have two book drops located on the east side of the library facing the parking lot, plus three book drops on Green Street. All book drops are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

When public libraries locate in urban areas, parking is the number one concern for library users. The Tompkins County Public Library chose downtown Ithaca for its centrality and vitality. We like being part of the urban vibrancy and our windows facing Green Street provide an ever-changing vista of people, buses, and cars. And with construction in our back yard, the south reading room may be transformed from a quiet oasis to a sidewalk superintendent's perch as we watch the parking garage being built from within the safety of our building.

What was sacrificed when we moved closer to the Commons was the possibility of acres of free parking in a suburban landscape. With the temporary shrinkage of available parking, the library users will need to remember why we are at the corner of Cayuga and Green Street. We treasure our location despite the disruption and we and hope that everyone will deal with the situation with grace and understanding.