Visits to Boise libraries are down, and main branch is aging. Will city build new one?
Five years after former Mayor David Bieter was scalded by public opposition — and ultimately, lost reelection —- in part over efforts to build a new main library downtown, the city is wading back into conversations with residents about the library system’s future.
When the library director, Jessica Dorr, was hired in 2020, the library’s board of trustees decided the time had come for a new strategic plan. Voters had not only turned out Bieter, they had passed an ordinance requiring a citywide referendum on any expensive new library. Then COVID-19 arrived. The pandemic brought increased use of the system’s online resources and rapid population growth as remote workers moved to the city.
The board “really wanted to re-engage” after those events, Dorr told the Idaho Statesman by phone. “They wanted “a discussion with the community about, ‘What are the programs and services the community wants the library to provide? What is that is the impact that the community wants the library to have?’”
Since the pandemic, the number of people coming into library buildings has dropped sharply, though library staff say it’s trending upward again. In its 2023 fiscal year, the library system logged about 642,770 in-person visitors, up from around 550,000 in 2022, but still a 57% decline from its 1.5 million visitors in 2019.
The 2022 annual report said the library logged over 250,000 visits to its main downtown location that year, and between 50,000 and 100,000 at each of its its four branches.
At the same time, digital use has significantly expanded since COVID-19, library Communications Manager Joshua Letsinger told the Statesman by email. In 2022, the system logged 1.3 million print books circulated and over 900,000 e-books circulated. It reported over 3 million visits to its online library catalog.
Boise resident Chandra Hisel cited the system’s reduced hours — since COVID — as a driver for her own family’s reduced in-person visits.
It’s not that people don’t want to use the library, she told the Statesman by email: “We want to come, we just have a hard time working around such a limited operating schedule.”
The main downtown library has cut back to 56 hours per week — from 64 before the pandemic — but is open every day of the week, Letsinger wrote. Branch locations have maintained about the same total weekly hours, but different daily schedules that include reduced weekend hours.
Library officials held “listening sessions, attended various community events, interviewed individuals and organizations, offered visioning activities in our libraries, and conducted an online survey that had over 2,300 responses,” according to the library’s website.
In the surveys, the city asked open-ended questions, expecting most of the feedback to be about the types of programs and services the libraries offer. Instead, “we got an awful lot of feedback from the community about wanting to have a discussion about facilities and about locations,” Dorr said.
Library officials decided the next step would be to create a facilities plan with the help of an outside architecture and planning firm. On Feb. 13, library officials met for the first time with a San Francisco-based firm, Group 4, to begin a year-long process of analyzing library use and growth projections for the next five years.
The City Council signed off Feb. 6 on the selection of the firm. Its analysis is expected to cost the city about $300,000.
Will these efforts result in a new main library building?
“I don’t know, to be honest. And I think that I shouldn’t know at this point in time,” Dorr said.
She said library and city officials are open to many possible scenarios and trade-offs, noting that a conversation about facilities would not just be about physical spaces.
“Our website is available 24 hours a day, and some of our most heavy users of the library are digital users” checking out e-books or using online databases, she said. “We’re also thinking about the people we’re serving even if they never come into a building.”
West Boise needs branch, advocate says
Mark Salisbury, a resident of West Boise who has been organizing in recent years for a new library branch in his neighborhood, has mixed feelings about the city’s strategic approach.
“I could say, I suppose, that it’s kind of obvious where our coverage gap is, like, we don’t need a study,” Salisbury said, noting that he feels a sense of urgency as he watches open lots in West Boise fill up. “There’s just not that many places you can put a library in West Boise anymore without having to tear an existing building down.”
Still, he said, “I think it actually is good that the city goes through a more formal process.”
Dorr acknowledged Salisbury’s concerns but emphasized that she is taking a more holistic perspective.
“It’s really important for me to be taking a system view and being thoughtful about where we’re making investments, with every location, every person that lives in Boise in mind.”
This story was originally published February 20, 2024 at 12:41 PM.
