New Warwick Public Library is now information central

At 3:30 on a Monday afternoon, Walter Greene sat at a round table in a
sun-drenched room at the Warwick Public Library, papers spread in every
direction. He was tying up loose ends for his job as a sales
representative for MCD Air Transport, some 20 miles away in Lincoln.
A Warwick resident, Greene is typical of people with home-based
businesses and jobs requiring a lot of travel who take advantage of
everything from periodicals to a fast (and free-of-charge) Internet
connection at the town’s newly renovated and vastly improved library on
Sandy Lane.
“With so many people having home businesses now, the public library can
really be their primary source of information,” said Douglas Pearce,
library director.
In Warwick, a new delivery system came at the cost of a $4.5 million
bond, a $1 million donation from the Champlin Foundation and on-going
fund raising events, Pearce said.
Completed in late October after more than a year of construction, the
building has grown from 33,000 square feet to 63,000 square feet of
luminous space with special touches for the working person, as well as
the browser. Among them are a series of windowed rooms for study or work
groups, two for word processing, a common “quiet center,” large and
small conference rooms with a kitchenette, and space for 168 computer
terminals with high-speed, T-1 access to the World Wide Web, according
to Sharon Fredette, the library’s technical services coordinator.
Currently, there are 28 computers available to the public with more
being added each week, she said.
Greene, who visits the library at least twice a week to read Barron’s
and access the Web could have saved his paper work for his Warwick home.
But the tranquil, uncluttered environment and the quiet hum of activity
makes for better working conditions, he said.
“It’s a fantastic resource and I find here I can relax more,” Greene
said, adding “we’re very lucky.”
Architect Jay Litman, who designed the library while working for Keyes
Associates of Providence, said he had people like Greene in mind.
The library of long ago was a “book repository. Now it’s a place to get
information and sometimes make information,” he said.
To that end, the library has a home page from which people can link to
an array of business resources, including company and product
information, magazine and newspaper archives, investment information,
and yellow page listings, among others.
Most of the resources can be accessed by PC from home. The exceptions
are some CD-ROM products. Among the most popular are a reverse telephone
directory used mostly by sales and marketing types, Law Check and the
American Business Disc, according to Reference Librarian Susan Dunn.
Of course, no office is complete without coffee – which is why Litman
included space for a privately run coffee shop in his design. Upon
entering the library or at any time during a visit, people can buy a
beverage or snack at Felicia’s Coffee and actually sip between the
stacks, Litman said.
“Barnes & Noble are what they are because they learned from libraries,”
Litman said. “Now libraries have to learn from Barnes and Noble.”