Cranberry library to get upgrade
CRANBERRY TWP — The Cranberry Township Community Chest Project of the Year for 2019 will be the largest to date.
According to Bruce Mazzoni, township supervisor and CTCC project coordinator, the $750,000 project — titled “Forge Ahead” — will feature upgrades and enhancements to the township's public library. The work will include the creation of new spaces, as well as the implementation of new technology.
The project will create a new “makerspace,” which is a small workshop outfitted with tools and work benches designed for collaboration and making things in a hands-on environment. The concept, while new, has been successful in school classrooms and private subscription facilities across the country, Mazzoni said.
On the technology side, a radio frequency identification program will be installed. This will allow the library and its patrons to use electronic signals instead of bar code scanning to identify books and cardholders during checkout and filing. Leslie Pallotta, library director, said instead of scanning books individually, a patron can scan multiple items at a time.
A third self-checkout kiosk will be added as part of the project, she said.
In an effort to make the building more accessible, automatic sliding doors will be installed, which officials hope will minimize the difficulty getting in and out of the library for patrons using wheelchairs or walkers. Energy-efficient LED lighting will be installed, as will new carpeting and upgraded staff areas.
The “Forge Ahead” project name is a nod to the Cranberry Municipal Center and library building's past. The facility was built in 1963 to house metalworking factory Perry Forge.
Pallotta said the inclusion of makerspace and STEAM programming has been happening incrementally for at least five years, and the new project will help solidify those offerings.
“This is an opportunity for us to have a more formal space for it,” she said.
Renderings of the project show the makerspace as a room with glass doors and windows, featuring tables and bright lighting. The glass walls are covered in black marker, showing sketches for concepts and projects that could be completed within the space. It will be built in the area of the library that currently houses numerous public computers, and Pallotta stressed those computers will not be removed from the library.
Pallotta said she and other officials have done, “an awful lot of exploration” into what makes for successful spaces at the local, national and even international level.
She said library officials attended a MakerSpace Bootcamp at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh last week, and hope to take what was learned there and build new programming off it.
She said the radio frequency program will hopefully allow for better efficiency for both patrons and library staff.
“We're hoping that freeing up some of the staff time will give them the chance to become more hands on in the makerspace,” she said.
In the interim, once the project gets under way, library staff will be tasked with the “labor intensive” process of putting the system in place.
“We now have to tag all 80,000 items in the library,” Pallotta said. “It is a fantastic problem to have. I'm an incredibly, incredibly lucky librarian.”
Pallotta said the library has also written a Keystone Grant for about $490,000 for the project, which would require matching funds. This would be in addition to the CTCC money.
“We're keeping our fingers crossed and biting our nails until August when we find out if we got that grant or not,” she said.
