San Fernando Building Doubles Space : Patrons Check Out New Library

San Fernando librarian Barry Shemaria isn’t sad to see the city’s library move from the spot where it had been for the past 35 years to a new location with more than twice the space.

“Everybody said it was a cozy, friendly library,” Shemaria said Saturday at the reopening of the San Fernando Library before about 150 people at 1050 Library St.

But “we couldn’t even move,” Shemaria said of the old location next to the county courthouse. “There weren’t enough chairs for people to sit, not enough tables, and I had a desk this big,” she said, holding her hands about 2 feet apart.

The new library has about 6,500 square feet; the old one had about 2,700.

The old one also had no restrooms. Those in need had to go to the nearby courthouse, City Hall or a restaurant.

The library is the oldest in the San Fernando Valley. The building on Library Street is its seventh location since 1914 and is expected to cost $48,000 a year in rent. The county’s Macneil Street property had been rent-free. The library had been closed since the move to Library Street began in late August.

The new renewable lease will last five years, but county officials still consider the facility “long-term temporary,” said Sue Curzon, county regional library administrator for the north Valley.

Eventually, she said, the county Public Library would like to build a larger permanent facility, possibly with money from Proposition 85, an initiative on the November ballot that would make $75 million available for library construction and renovation statewide.

In the meantime, the new space in San Fernando provides for more books and an expanded English language and literacy lab, Curzon said.

Teresa Zaragoza and her son, Alberto, 8, were in the crowd attending Saturday’s dedication, which featured Mexican dancing girls and a guitar-strumming duet. She and her son used the old library three to four times a week as a place to study, she said.

“It was getting kind of small,” Zaragoza said. The library gives Alberto and other children “a good place to go to learn instead of sitting at home and watching TV,” she said.