Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

THIS PLACE:

Library transfer is about people, too

Staffers, programs will change with branch’s management

Library

Steve Marcus

Library page Danielle Cooke, 16, and volunteer Melissa Collier, 14, take down a display in the Green Valley Library in Henderson on Tuesday. The branch, operated by the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, is closing, but will reopen as a Henderson Library District branch next year.

Click to enlarge photo

Andrew Kaplan, a children's librarian at the Green Valley Library, will move with the books and equipment to the new Centennial Hills Library, 25 miles to the north.

Green Valley Library did its best to nurture a sense of community.

It had story times and teen groups, offered as much homework help as it could and facilitated an untold number of Google searches.

The dimly lighted library, a place that seems increasingly quaint in an era of iPhones and Wii, helped children discover the simple pleasure of reading paperback copies of “Clifford the Big Red Dog.”

It drew more than 150 children for puppet shows, the last about Handy Manny the repairman and his cast of tools.

Now the puppet stage — and everything else in the library — is being moved 25 miles north.

The 20-year-old Green Valley Library, operated by the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, temporarily closed Tuesday as workers took down the holiday decorations before Christmas and others packed up the library’s belongings.

The books and the staff are moving to the new Centennial Hills Library at Buffalo Drive and Deer Springs Way. It will open Jan. 10.

The Henderson Library District will take over the Green Valley Library and reopen it next year, likely in late April. The move is part of an effort to make the Henderson district’s taxing boundaries coincide with the city’s boundaries.

Henderson plans to spend about $500,000 renovating the building and stocking its shelves.

“We have most of the same types of materials,” said Thomas Fay, executive director of the Henderson district. “We probably don’t carry as many DVDs. It hasn’t been a focus. We’ve worked on having reading material. Our focus is on literature and literacy. The book is always better anyway.”

Andrew Kaplan, a children’s librarian, has spent four years running a teen program in Green Valley encouraging the youths’ involvement in animation books from Japan. He’ll have to start over with a new group of children, because like the books, he too is being reassigned to the Centennial Hills Library.

“The children we see all the time, you develop a bond with them,” he said. “You see them grow up.”

There’s nothing easy about moving a library that, until the staff started thinning the collection for the move, had about 100,000 items — from old encyclopedias to new copies of “Twilight” and Black Sabbath albums.

“Theoretically they’ll be packed in order and unpacked in order,” Kaplan said as he looked over the dozens of shelves still to be cleaned off. “That’s the theory, anyway.”

Until Green Valley Library reopens, patrons’ closest library will be Henderson’s Paseo Verde branch, about four miles south on Green Valley Parkway.

The closed library will undergo renovations starting in January, getting new shelves, a computer lab with 30 stations and a relocated service desk.

The outside will look the same for the moment, still sharing its parking lot with a Chili’s restaurant and a medical center.

In other words, new management but same location.

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