“Preserving the Past, Exploring the Future” – BPL Community Engagement Update
by Floyd Council, Executive Director, Birmingham Public Library
Note: This column was written during the 2019 American Library Association Annual Conference.
Greetings, BPL patrons and friends from the 2019 American Library Association Conference in Washington, D.C. I write to you this morning from the nation’s capital where team members are attending the American Library Association Annual Conference.
Now more than ever our public library system is the center of all of our 99 neighborhoods and 23 communities in the City of Birmingham. BPL partnered with Google last August to be the first American Public Library to kick off the Alabama and National Grow with Google tour of digital skills.
As a result, you see many key members of the BPL team and the tech community featured this month in The Atlantic magazine in partnership with Google. BPL has also recently returned to the national spotlight as a true beacon in the Southeast as the only Urban Libraries Council library member in the State of Alabama.
BPL has been the headquarters location and member of Jefferson County Library Cooperative for over 40 years.
Currently, BPL is providing all of our traditional programs, services, and partnerships as well as collaborating at the center of major City of Birmingham community engagement projects such as A Citizen’s Experience, Peace in the Park, and Complete Communities, to name a view. BPL has long been about much more than just our beautiful books and maps.
We are working actively to take library service to the next level in Birmingham.
Here are 10 of the top updates of what we are working on and some of what we are planning to do soon to keep putting library patrons first in the City of Birmingham:
1. The Wylam Library Construction Project is a $1.6 million new library which has been 20 years in the making and now scheduled to open in January 2020.
2. The long-awaited Central Library Monumental Stairs Project is a $1.4 million project that just finished the bidding process. This project will replace the escalators with a beautiful new design of interactive public stairs and create a new path of interior light for the building. We also hope to replace elevators when funding is available.
3. Last fall we transformed the first floor of the Central Library East Building into a flexible programming space that can seat about 400 people, and we have hosted wonderful programs in the space such as the historic Wayne Wiegand lecture on desegregation of Birmingham Public Libraries, Grow with Google Day of Digital Skills, UniverSoul Circus, Staff Day 2018, Local Authors Expo 2018, Bards & Brews (BPL's monthly spoken word poetry event, which was featured by a national blogger from North Carolina), and Reading Between the Wines 2019. We also hosted amazing programs and partnerships at all Birmingham Public Library locations during the last year.
4. Current: Working on planning and funding for redesign of our BPL website and BPL mobile application.
5. Current: Working on planning and funding for Central Library East Building flooring and interior design upgrades.
6. Current: Working on staffing models to keep all neighborhood libraries open without closing for lunch hours.
7. Current: Working to improve security infrastructure and measures system-wide.
8. Current: Working on a new marketing and communications plan. This includes updates to signage, interior merchandising, and branding.
9. Current: Working on a comprehensive Business Operations Plan which includes new development and grants objectives.
10. Current: Working on an interactive community engagement plan with use of the ALA Libraries Transform practice and Harwood methodology for community engagement.
This fall the BPL Library Board will meet on scheduled dates at two of our regional library locations, and we also look forward to listening as we host community engagement table talks at three of our regional library locations.
All citizens are always welcome to visit our monthly board of trustees meeting to speak on our public voices agenda. Meetings are held on the second Tuesday of each month. Citizens and visitors are welcome to reach out to us at any time with questions, comments, and suggestions by email to us at community_engagement@bham.lib.al.us
See the BPL Annual Report of performance.
We are thankful to our Mayor Randall Woodfin and City of Birmingham leadership team, the Birmingham City Council, all BPL Trustees, Friends Foundation of the Birmingham Public Library, staff, volunteers, retirees, friends, and, always first, library patrons.
Please click on our website for more news about BPL.
Note: This column was written during the 2019 American Library Association Annual Conference.
 |
| BPL staff at Grow With Google workshop outside Central Library |
Greetings, BPL patrons and friends from the 2019 American Library Association Conference in Washington, D.C. I write to you this morning from the nation’s capital where team members are attending the American Library Association Annual Conference.
As a result, you see many key members of the BPL team and the tech community featured this month in The Atlantic magazine in partnership with Google. BPL has also recently returned to the national spotlight as a true beacon in the Southeast as the only Urban Libraries Council library member in the State of Alabama.
BPL has been the headquarters location and member of Jefferson County Library Cooperative for over 40 years.
 |
| Mayor Randall Woodfin greets BPL board trustee Eunice Johnson Rogers |
Currently, BPL is providing all of our traditional programs, services, and partnerships as well as collaborating at the center of major City of Birmingham community engagement projects such as A Citizen’s Experience, Peace in the Park, and Complete Communities, to name a view. BPL has long been about much more than just our beautiful books and maps.
We are working actively to take library service to the next level in Birmingham.
Here are 10 of the top updates of what we are working on and some of what we are planning to do soon to keep putting library patrons first in the City of Birmingham:
1. The Wylam Library Construction Project is a $1.6 million new library which has been 20 years in the making and now scheduled to open in January 2020.
2. The long-awaited Central Library Monumental Stairs Project is a $1.4 million project that just finished the bidding process. This project will replace the escalators with a beautiful new design of interactive public stairs and create a new path of interior light for the building. We also hope to replace elevators when funding is available.
3. Last fall we transformed the first floor of the Central Library East Building into a flexible programming space that can seat about 400 people, and we have hosted wonderful programs in the space such as the historic Wayne Wiegand lecture on desegregation of Birmingham Public Libraries, Grow with Google Day of Digital Skills, UniverSoul Circus, Staff Day 2018, Local Authors Expo 2018, Bards & Brews (BPL's monthly spoken word poetry event, which was featured by a national blogger from North Carolina), and Reading Between the Wines 2019. We also hosted amazing programs and partnerships at all Birmingham Public Library locations during the last year.
4. Current: Working on planning and funding for redesign of our BPL website and BPL mobile application.
5. Current: Working on planning and funding for Central Library East Building flooring and interior design upgrades.
6. Current: Working on staffing models to keep all neighborhood libraries open without closing for lunch hours.
7. Current: Working to improve security infrastructure and measures system-wide.
8. Current: Working on a new marketing and communications plan. This includes updates to signage, interior merchandising, and branding.
9. Current: Working on a comprehensive Business Operations Plan which includes new development and grants objectives.
10. Current: Working on an interactive community engagement plan with use of the ALA Libraries Transform practice and Harwood methodology for community engagement.
This fall the BPL Library Board will meet on scheduled dates at two of our regional library locations, and we also look forward to listening as we host community engagement table talks at three of our regional library locations.
All citizens are always welcome to visit our monthly board of trustees meeting to speak on our public voices agenda. Meetings are held on the second Tuesday of each month. Citizens and visitors are welcome to reach out to us at any time with questions, comments, and suggestions by email to us at community_engagement@bham.lib.al.us
See the BPL Annual Report of performance.
We are thankful to our Mayor Randall Woodfin and City of Birmingham leadership team, the Birmingham City Council, all BPL Trustees, Friends Foundation of the Birmingham Public Library, staff, volunteers, retirees, friends, and, always first, library patrons.
Please click on our website for more news about BPL.
Comments