I absolutely love this. Good stuff, man.

I love how you include a cleanup space. Very cozy 3rd place for people to hangout. Good job dude!

How do you continue to fund this though?

Every public library is a beacon of hope. Its the most true symbol of a civilized society. Each one brings light of knowledge where there would otherwise be darkness of ignorance.

Please pass my thanks to your wife for advancing civilization.

That looks awesome!

A few tips, based on what has worked in our local libraries:

• A story-reading space where parents or caregivers can bring infants and toddlers to listen to books being read outloud. Librarians, parents, and volunteers take turns as book readers. Hugely popular. Absolutely packed them in. One branch even built a hand-painted replica of the "Goodnight Moon" set.

• A separate, private space for nursing mothers.

• If the budget allows it, a phone charging station.

• Space for common government forms. Applications for welfare, disability, voter, and tax forms. If you can get volunteers to help, even better.

• Was going to mention tools, but see you already have it. In ours, you can check out shovels, saws, wrench sets, gardening tools, etc, to take home for a few days. It got so popular they had to move into their own space.

We love our local libraries.

Thank you.

Obviously I love books and complaining about not enough books. But actually who cares. This is badass. Every bullet point cooler than the last. A kitchen? A workshop?? A shower and wash room?!

Actually excellent. Congrats to your wife's hard work!

Just another wow post, make sure to tell her people from all over the world are grateful for her work:)

My god the world needs people like your wife. Man. Tell her that I said she’s amazing.

I really wish Imgur didn't block VPNs 🙁

I'm sure it's lovely - congratulations!

We really need more wholesome stuff like this in Lemmy.

Holy crap, that is a legitimately amazing place! Well done by Mrs. Squid!!

P.S. Libraries rock and are true treasures

Before you start complaining about how “libraries don’t have books anymore!” The book stacks are still a 10-minute drive/bus ride away at the downtown branch. The books aren’t going anywhere. Libraries are more than just books. They are one of the few places the community can get all sorts of resources and a place to access them for free

There's always interlibrary loans. I'm sure you can search for a book on the online catalogue and ask for it to be transferred from another branch.

Anyway, fantastic and very creative work. I wish I had a library like this near me growing up.

Wow.. that's gorgeous. A real community center..

That's cool as shit, wow. I hope she's proud!

Libraries are the best shining examples of community service & thats the coolest library I’ve ever seen. props to your wife and who helped make it happen!

The clean up area... Amazing.

Being dirty was one of my biggest fears when I was homeless. I felt like if I passed the point where I couldn't clean myself anymore, it would just get so much worse from there.

This is incredible and is going to be such a benefit to the community. Your wife is good people and the world truly needs more libraries and "third places" for everyone in a community to use and feel safe in regardless of their socioeconomic status or education or anything else.

How many people did it take to get this done? It looks fantastic for something that is just getting started.

holy freaking cow this is the coolest thing ever! is there any way that we can (through sheer willpower maybe?) magically make one of these in every state?

stuff like this keeps me and my hope in humanity alive, thank you for sharing and thank you Mrs. Squid for being so awesome :)

Elkhart didn't have the best libraries when I was growing up (80s), but they felt like the only decent lifeline to the outside world, before the internet. I regret not taking better advantage of them, but their selection was extremely old till they moved to a bigger building.

Farmers have a really weird love/hate attitude towards books.

Try to convince your library to get a 3d printer, and do demonstration classes, I think they'll find people really like them and kids can make projects for their parents or even school (our schools had 0 budget for anything, we legit learned on trash 80s in 1991).

Edit: looking through the pictures, would love to take my kid there, nice.

I actually feel like I'm going to cry right now. This is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard of. I wish every town had something like this

As a grumpy skeptic doomer, thank you! Keep doing this. I really hope it helps a great number of people.

That is AWESOME! You both must be so proud!

Very cool. Seems like it has all the things many modern libraries should pivot to offering where possible.

This is amazing! I love hearing stories like this. Keep up the fantastic work.

Congratulations! I love seeing new libraries show up! I hope you don't have to deal with authoritarian jackasses trying to ban books.

Looks great fellow Hoosier. Terre Haute needs more of this.

Congrats.

Is Terre Haute really that poor? Not what I'd expect from the hometown of one of our country's most premier private technical colleges. Usually a college contributes quite a bit to the local economy, and that's a fancy one.

Huge W

Why would you hurt Leslie Knope like this?

Tell her thank you. Awesome job. Now can we put one of these in every town?

Heeeey whats up my fellow hoosier. Cheers to your bookstore!!

Dope. As. Fuck.