Judith Ireland is a librarian, not a gardener. She's looking forward to the day she can stop thinning out the literary crop at the Rose Park Branch Library.
"In order to keep current and keep adding new books to the collection, we have to constantly weed out things that are out of date or worn to make room for new ones," said Ireland, manager of the Salt Lake City Public Library branch for nearly 22 years. "We've been out of space for quite some time."Seeds planted several years ago are about to sprout, and the Rose Park branch is less than two growing seasons away from having a new home - one twice as big as the current facility.
City library officials announced this week that construction of a state-of-the-art Rose Park Library is scheduled to begin in May. It should be open to the public by early summer 1996.
The 12,000-square-foot structure will cost about $1.5 million. It will be located on a 10-acre parcel along the Jordan River Parkway at 1000 North and Redwood Road - about six blocks west of the existing library.
"They are just out of space at this point, and there just isn't enough land surrounding it to expand on that site," said Salt Lake City Library spokeswoman Colleen McLaughlin.
The current Rose Park branch building, at 1185 W. 1000 North, is about 30 years old.
The new library will be the second-largest of the system's six libraries. Only the downtown Main Library is larger than the planned Rose Park building.
It will be the city's first new library since the Anderson-Foothill branch opened in 1985. That library and the Sweet branch have undergone expansion since then.
The design plan allows for a large children's collection and includes a meeting room that will hold about 140 people. A small amphitheater for concerts and other productions will be built outside the library near the river.
"In the northwest part of town there are quite a number of cultures represented, and we will be able to expand our multicultural materials - our collection of magazines and books - in the new library," Ireland said. "We're going to have three quiet study rooms for small conferences.
"Electronically, it will be built for the next century."
Ireland said the building may include a satellite dish to facilitate teleconferencing.
McLaughlin said construction will be funded in part by a federal grant of $256,000 and a gift of $150,000 from the Jon M. Huntsman family. She said the library system hopes to raise most of the remaining money from a fund-raising campaign it will conduct this spring.