The New Mission Hills-Hillcrest Branch Library Expands in Size and Content
The new Mission Hills-Hillcrest Branch Library will be four-times the size of the current library on Washington Street.
Due for completion of construction September 2018, and to open in January 2019, the Harley and Bessie Knox Library of Mission Hills and Hillcrest will be one-story with two stories of underground parking. In addition to shelves of books, it will include a children’s area, computers, media, media-making such as 3-D printers and other technology, four meeting rooms and study rooms, a bookstore, staff space, an interior “healing garden” room, a courtyard on Washington Street, and fabulous programs to entertain and educate the public from children’s happenings, to author presentations, history, and seniors programs, among others. A Youth Services Library will be in operation to serve toddlers to teens.
Phyllis Marion, president of the Friends of Mission Hills/Hillcrest Branch Library, explains that the friends were created in 1983 to advocate for members and raise funds. Not the major donor funds, but operating and program funds, which are used for books, programs, equipment, and interior cosmetics. The library is city owned. The Friends add the community priorities. Friends are completely volunteers, people who offer their time and/or money, and whose personal time donations can be fitted to the friend’s time availability. The two biggest needs looking forward, Marion foresees, are bookstore volunteers and people to develop and operate programs. The more volunteers that offer to work in the bookstore, the more time the store will be able to be open, earning funds directly for the library, of course.
Marion said she is excited about developing programs and hopes to create a pantheon of speakers who want to share the history of their lives and families in Mission Hills, directed to both adults and children. New volunteers to the Friends may sign up at library92103@gmail.com.
Category: Education, Local News
