NLV library branch moving to City Hall

North Las Vegas’ main library shut its doors Friday in preparation for its move down the street into a smaller space.

The move signifies a district­wide shift to maximize efficiency as well as tune in to community needs, library district Director Forrest Lewis said.

It’s no secret the troubled city must cut costs. The move is intended to be a money-saver. The city’s oldest library, built in 1966, was looking at costly renovations over the next few years. The library district’s budget will save about half a million dollars, city Finance Director Darren Adair said.

North Las Vegas hasn’t calculated the citywide savings of the move, he said. The city’s police will be using the building for evidence and crime lab purposes. Adair said the upkeep won’t be nearly as pricey as what would be required of a heavily trafficked public space such as a library.

The branch is setting up shop inside City Hall with a renewed purpose in the form of a computer and career center. A grand opening is scheduled for Oct. 8.

Filling space in the $130 million City Hall has been a struggle since it was built in 2011. Absorbing the library still will leave some empty space.

As a result of the move, scores of books sat for sale Thursday in the old library at 2300 Civic Center Drive.

Patrons can expect the branch’s roughly 80,000-book collection to be significantly reduced. In previous interviews, Lewis has said more than half of the library’s books would need to be sold. On Friday, he couldn’t give an updated ballpark figure of how many books must go.

Weeding out unused books was something that should have happened years ago, Lewis said.

The library district had developed an odd niche. North Las Vegas was known as the place where someone could find a book other library districts had purged years ago, he said. That was great for the random person in Summer­lin who needed an obscure title for a research project, but it wasn’t serving North Las Vegas, Lewis said.

“We want to make sure the books that do occupy the space on our shelves are books that are actually needed and wanted by the community,” Lewis said. Narrowing the branch’s collection to items such as popular fiction, career books and children’s books gives the branch the space to address a library service it says has grown in popularity.

Community outcry for this branch has been for computer access, Lewis said. Library patrons rely not only on computers for job hunting, but also library staff to help them navigate the computer skills today’s job market demands.

The new City Hall space will separate the books and computers into different rooms, allowing staff to give patrons more computer assistance without disturbing others, Lewis said. It also will give the library the ability to hold classes.

Still, some library patrons were sad about the shift.

“Sucks. Sucks. Sucks,” Marilyn Beilstein said of the closure as she picked through the for-sale section Thursday. The former North Las Vegas resident fondly recalled the branch as being the first library she visited in the valley back in 1976.

“I don’t go to this branch much anymore, but I sure used to,” Beilstein sighed, calling the closure “an end of an era.”

For others, the change was welcome.

“That’s great,” North Las Vegas resident Robert Lucero said. “I actually like this library because they have a lot of computers.”

Lucero has been unemployed about a month and goes to the library three to four times a week to apply for jobs.

Lewis said the move is part of a systemwide effort to zero in on what residents who use each branch actually need. The relocation to City Hall means the branch will be closed Fridays, but that will allow the Aliante Library branch to be open on that day.

The smaller space also will require less staff, allowing some employees to be moved to Aliante Library so it can have a full-time children’s librarian Mondays and Tuesdays.

As the branch is still in the process of sorting what to keep, what to relocate to another branch and what to give away, numbers weren’t available for just how many books will be at the new location, Lewis said.

Book lovers need not fear, though. Books are not being tossed, Lewis said.

Unwanted books are being sold through the Friends of the Library bookstore. And one College of Southern Nevada professor took the opportunity to swoop in with students and hunt for books that CSN’s collection could use.

Books are still No. 1 for the library district, but education is a priority, too, and the changes reflect that, Lewis said.

“We want to do everything we can to help our residents here succeed,” Lewis said. “Our goal is to really keep an eye out and to find out what are the jobs that are coming up, what are the training requirements for those jobs, and to make sure that our residents will have access to that information.”

In the interim, due dates have been extended for materials checked out from the closed branch. The old book drop is unavailable for returns, but patrons can return items to Alexander Library, 1755 W. Alexander Road, or to any Las Vegas-Clark County library location.

Contact Bethany Barnes at bbarnes@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861. Find her on Twitter: @betsbarnes.