Centerville to get new library this year

CENTERVILLE — A branch of the Davis County Library System will be built here this year, the first such library for Centerville.

The 35-year-old South Branch Library in Bountiful is the closest for this city of nearly 20,000 people.

Pete Giacoma, director of the county library system, said plans will be drawn up for the library this spring and construction is expected to begin in the fall with a late-summer opening.

The project is anticipated to cost about $2 million including furniture and books, Giacoma said. "It will be a small library, focused on providing very high-use items," he said. The library will be designed so it can be expanded in the future, from about 8,000 square feet to 16,000 square feet.

The library, to be built at 400 West and Parrish Lane, initially will have about 30,000 items, including books, videos, magazines and audio tapes, and could reach 65,000 items if it is doubled in size, Giacoma said.

Although the library will not be the size of Bountiful's South Branch, its small size doesn't bother Giacoma, because the changing nature of libraries and information distribution may call for smaller buildings in the future that have the capability, through electronic means, of downloading whole books to devices patrons bring in. "We don't foresee the disappearance of the book, but we don't know the role of the library in the future," he said.

While there is no doubting the need for this growing city to have its own branch library, another reason to build one is to take pressure off the Bountiful branch, Giacoma said. "We expect use of the South Branch to decline by 15 percent once the Centerville branch is open. It could be as much as 20 percent; that's what we have seen in the north end since the Syracuse branch opened in August and use of the Clearfield branch declined."

Giacoma said the Harry Potter craze has peaked, and right now the hottest title the system has is "The Da Vinci Code," a novel set in Paris at the time of Leonardo da Da Vinci. The system, he said, has 60 copies of the book.

Assistant City Manager Blaine Lutz said the location of the library, next to large retail stores and adjacent to a proposed housing development, makes it ideal "for people to get or drop off books as they go shopping and save a trip."

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