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Whether you're in the dreaming and planning stages or further along the design road, you'll find ideas, information, and inspiration, no matter your budget!

Library Journal is thrilled to once again be hosting our long-running library building and design event in person! And we’re especially excited to be hosting it in partnership with Missoula Public Library.  This full-day think tank provides expert panel discussions with architects and librarians, as well as hands-on, architect-led breakout sessions tackling real-life design challenges submitted in advance by attendees. Dig deep with architects, librarians, and vendors to explore building/renovating/ retrofitting spaces both large and small that will redefine the relationship with your users and engage your community. There will be plenty of facetime and networking opportunities throughout the day with colleagues.

Join us and get ideas, information, and inspiration for any design challenges your library might be facing!

Check out our full coverage of Design Institute NYC 2022 and the 5 Design Challenges we tackled there.

This event is open to librarians, library board or foundation members, and the library’s city planners/officials. 

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To be invoiced for your registration or pay with a PO, please email your request to ljevents@mediasourceinc.com

Hailey Public Library 

Hailey, ID

RATIO Design-Blackfoot Board Room (4th floor)

Located 10 miles south of Sun Valley Ski Resort, Hailey, ID, is a fast-growing and vibrant community of 9,500 residents. The population is growing in diversity, including recent retirees, young families, professionals who have relocated during the pandemic, and 30 percent residents with Hispanic heritage. The Hailey Public Library has a vision to create a warm and inviting flexible space that will serve as a civic and cultural destination in the heart of downtown and support the small city’s urban renewal efforts. The library currently occupies 8,000 square feet in a historic building shared with City Hall, and the City recently purchased an adjacent building across an alleyway from the current library. These two spaces, joined by an outdoor area, offer the opportunity to fill a vital need for programming and meeting spaces, an overall improved layout, and new shelving design. The project will require major fundraising efforts (aiming to start with the Friends of the Library), a thoughtful renovation of a historic landmark, and close coordination with the City, which owns and shares the building.

Lincoln County Library, Troy Branch, Troy Library and Opportunity Center

Troy, MT

Noll & Tam Architects-spectrUm Discovery Area (1st floor)

Serving a geographically isolated, rural and dispersed regional population, the Troy Library and Opportunity Center Project in Troy, MT has an ambitious goal to pool resources across a variety of partner organizations to address community risk factors including substance abuse, a need for human connectivity, poverty, and access to quality mental health care. Currently 1,768 square feet, the project aims to increase the library and center’s footprint to at least 4,268 square feet. Through community engagement efforts, the library has learned that there is a great community appetite for programming, specialized spaces like a community kitchen, and job service classes. These desires, combined with the agency’s partners’ needs, will require creativity in space allocation, function, and flexibility. The library and center sit on a superfund site, so remediation of contamination and asbestos will be necessary. While the County Commissioners are supportive of the project, they do not want to raise taxes to fund the anticipated $4 million dollar cost of the project. Despite this, the project has already secured grant funding from the Headwaters, Montana Economic Developers Association, Montana Healthcare Foundation, American Library Association, and partner resource pooling, and it anticipates a major capital funding campaign soon. 

Owatonna Public Library

Owatonna, MN

OPN Architects Families First Services (2nd floor)

With a start date in mind and 100 percent funding secured for a renovation and expansion of its current building, the Owatonna Public Library seeks to change the perception of what the library can be for its community. It aims to do this by reimagining both the 1992 addition and the original 1901 building with improved circulation, less cavernous shelving with better sightlines, a grant-funded makerspace, and an overall reconceived layout for collections, staff functions, programming, and meeting spaces. With a projected expansion from 4,000 square feet to 6,500 square feet, the Owatonna Public Library can better support its 30,000 residents, industrial partners, and the region. One challenge the library faces with this project is to convince some community members that the function of a library is not only to house books but to serve the learning and skills-building goals of the community. 

Sweet Home Public Library

Sweet Home, OR

MSR Design-Makerspace (1st Floor)

In the visioning stages of a new building project, the Sweet Home Public Library, OR, seeks to offer its community a right-sized building that reflects both the future and the timber industry heritage of the community. Seated at the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, the 10,000-strong community has outgrown its current 1969 building. With 1 million dollars secured from donations and a local bond, the library seeks to expand its footprint from 5,757 square feet to around 14,000 square feet. To better serve a population that has historically supported the library since its inception in 1947, the library seeks to create a building that can support distinct teen and children’s spaces for programming, offer an open, welcoming and modern space for the community, and possibly share space with the Chamber of Commerce, the local community college, or low income housing for older adults. 

Yolo County Law Library

Woodland, CA

Johnston Architects-Demo Kitchen (3rd floor)

As a public law library serving Yolo County’s population of over 221,000 people, Yolo County Law Library, in Woodland, CA, is dreaming of a more functional and people-friendly space for both users and employees. Designed over 20 years ago to house the maximum number of print materials possible, the library space is now bisected by 14 banks of compact shelving that cut the front and rear spaces off from each other. Serving a population of residents and legal professionals with research needs, the library needs more space dedicated to people rather than books. With some reserve funds available now, the Library could engage in a modest renovation to improve circulation, remove some shelving, downsize its collection, and reallocate spaces for meeting rooms. If larger-scale improvements could take place, with possible financial investment from the county, the 2,099-square-foot space could be fully reimagined to provide the community with space to host programs, offer larger conferencing space, and offer more functional workspaces and better storage for employees.