New Look for Books

Come Monday, there will be no more anxious people peering through locked glass sliding doors or sneaking in through the employee entrance.

The Studio City Branch Library will be open for the community’s readers and researchers.

After two years of preparation and construction, the 11,500-square-foot library, at 12511 Moorpark St., will hold its grand opening celebration Monday at 1 p.m.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and City Councilman Michael Feuer will participate in the ribbon-cutting.

“I’ve been passing by here forever wanting to come in,” said Bob Beuth of Valley Glen, who showed up last Wednesday to see if the library was open yet. “I love libraries. It looks so great.”

The building, designed by the city Department of Public Works Bureau of Engineering and Architectural Design Division, looks from the outside more like an aquarium than a library. The rails, windowsills, light posts and wavy rooftop are painted sea green, to remind visitors of an ocean.

The new facility, which took two years to build, is twice the size of the old one, built in 1963 at 4400 Babcock Ave. Library officials considered the old building too small and outdated.

The new $3.5-million library is built partially on the site of the old one, which was torn down. The project was funded by Proposition 1, a 1989 voter-approved library bond.

The Studio City branch is one of 14 planned San Fernando Valley library construction projects.

Inside, a selection of posters--one with Laker star Shaquille O’Neal sitting in a tiny chair with a book, another with Sesame Street’s Big Bird and the words “Read and Grow” and another with the message “Having Fun Isn’t Hard When You’ve Got a Library Card”--are posted on the peach-colored walls.

A 25-foot magenta, turquoise, purple, baby blue and sea green stained-glass window--which looks like a wave of multicolored book pages floating to the ground--was donated by artist Mark Levy of Studio City.

The library will have 60,000 books, 5,000 fewer than the old facility, but access to millions of others via computer, said Arthur Pond, acting area manager for the East Valley area office of the L.A. Public Library. The building will also have a self-checkout machine, two library research computer terminals and 35 computers with Internet access, including four for children, equipped with search engines that block objectionable material.

There will also be a children’s reading room, as well as teen and adult sections.

On Wednesday, librarians Marjorie Clifton and Vania Arevlo, the latter fromthe Van Nuys branch, were busy sticking bar codes and identification tags on Pokemon comic books and videos, in preparation for opening day.

Residents are eagerly anticipating the opening, Pond said.

“I can’t think of anywhere else where the community has been so anxious for a library to open,” Pond said. “Yesterday, I looked up and there were 12 people standing at the window looking in.”

On a recent afternoon, four people approached within five minutes hoping to enter. That’s the way it has been since January, Pond said.

Claudia Duque, who lives nearby, is looking forward to finding books for her 2-year-old son, Christian. On Wednesday, she approached the library but was told to come back Monday.

“I like to take him to the library once a week,” she said. “This is great because it’s another library in the area.”

She said she’s been driving 20 minutes to the library in North Hollywood.

In addition to Monday’s grand opening, the Friends of the Studio City Branch, a support group for the library, will host an open house with tours next Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.