The Lakeland Regional Library in Killarney is anticipating a sit down with the Municipality of Killarney-Turtle Mountain to decide what comes next after completing the library's needs assessment that took place earlier this winter.
The library hired Winnipeg organization Republic Architecture to facilitate the needs assessment, drawing on community input through an open house and a survey that could be completed online and in person.
Library Administrator, Krista Law, says the needs assessment confirmed what they already knew, that their current building is not sufficient to accommodate the number and the size of programs they would like to offer their community.
"It really comes down to programming," says Law.
"Our programming has increased significantly since 2022. Once things returned to normal post-COVID, we realized we currently don't have enough space to run the kind of programs we want," she explains. "It's unfortunate when lack of space is the reason we can't proceed, especially since we have the staff, the funding, and the community support."
"Republic Architecture looked at the current building very carefully and it's not entirely suitable for renovation," explains Law. "There isn't a lot of room to grow here and it's fairly inaccessible at this time, so a renovation here would be a little bit prohibitive. We'd actually be better off either renovating a different building that was more suitable or starting from scratch with something new."
The community survey was met with a great response from the public, both with the number of responses but also the positive remarks and suggestions, something the needs assessment team was pleased to see.
"... the quality of the information we got back from folks was excellent!"
"They were really happy with the speed of returned surveys. They said it's when people respond early in the process, that's usually an indication of how invested they are in the topic. And they also really liked that we had quite a variety of demographics, so lots of different age groups, family sizes, working people, retired people, people with kids," she says. "So, overall, the quality of the information we got back from folks was excellent!"
"There was lots of room on the survey for compliments. And so, it's always nice to hear comments from people, not just ticking boxes, but people who take the time to write in things they love about the library, so that was nice as well," adds Law.
The library committee is hoping to meet with council members over the next few months to discuss the options, which include renovating their current building on Williams Avenue, seeking out a different building to use as-is or to renovate, or to build new on a new lot. Before that decision can be made Law says a feasibility study would most likely be conducted as that study brings to light the potential costs of each of the options.
Please listen to more with Krista Law below!