Yesterday (December 4), the Airdrie Public Library officially unveiled their new expansion with a tour for City Council and City Staff, community partners and members of the media.

The tour, led by Library Director Pam Medland, focused on the new children's area and new office space. The new areas have been in use since September, but the Library held off on an official unveiling until everything was totally complete and fully furnished.

Medland said the expansion has been well received by the community.

"We have expanded the space for our school aged children and that is being quite well used both by homeschoolers and after school, but it's really the preschool space that seems to be the most exciting, I think because that's the new area."

The addition of meeting space in the staff area means that other areas, like the McCall Room, can now be used by the public more often.

The tour was attended by Mayor Peter Brown, Councillors Al Jones and Tina Petrow and City Manager Paul Schulz. Members of the Airdrie Lioness Club and representatives of Vitreous Glass, both community partners, were also present. Both organizations helped fund aspects of the new expansion, and Medland said the support of the Library's community partners is incredibly valuable.

"What it allows us to do is to buy fun additional items that we might not be able to buy. We try to be very thrifty and bare bones, and so that gives us an opportunity to buy fun, playful things. It's like icing on the cake."

The expansion takes the library from 10,500 square feet to 12,500 square feet. While small, Medland believes the success foreshadows good things for the future.

"We are excited because this was just an expansion of two thousand square feet and it's allowed us to do quite a lot of different things. It's a wonderful new space, but as everybody knows we are hoping for a much larger library in the future."

 

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