North Natomas Library
2500 New Market Drive
Sacramento, CA 95835
Branch Manager: Tamera LeBeau
The North Natomas Library is a joint-use facility serving the North Natomas community, as well as the students, faculty and staff of both Inderkum High School and the Natomas Center of American River College. The library opened to the public on September 13, 2004, and is currently located on the campus of the new state-of-the-art Inderkum High School. A separate 23,000 square-foot facility will be built next to the school when funding becomes available. The library is seeking members to form an affiliate Friends of the Library group to spearhead this effort.
HISTORY OF THE NORTH NATOMAS LIBRARY
An Excerpt taken from the December 2004 Library Journal
Most public libraries include support for life-long learning among their missions. But few make it as central a part of their services as will the North Natomas Library (NNL).
The NNL is a "triple joint-use" facility, designed as part of the Sacramento Public Library (SPL), CA, to support the entire North Natomas community as well as the students, faculty, and staff of both the Natomas High School and a new campus of the Los Rios Community College. This complex project can work partly because Natomas is a planned community still being built, says Anne Marie Gold, director of SPL, and partly "because the library director, the high school principal, and the college president get together for coffee every Monday morning."
Situated smack dab in the center of town, the library will be part of the Education Center, a 47-acre campus that now includes only the high school but will also be home to the community college. NNL gives full meaning to the values of partnerships and the synergies they can bring. All three institutions jointly support an array of learning services in the library that will include computer center learning activities, adult literacy, a career center, a distance learning center, gallery space, and a high school community service program. The Education Center shares a central quadrangle that includes an amphitheater, landscaping, seating areas, a sculpture courtyard, and food services.
Technology is being devised to provide ultimate flexibility. In this rapidly growing planned community, every house is equipped with fiber optics. A challenge, Gold says, is how the library—as the one communitywide institution—can become the virtual home for a wired community, extending library services, and learning opportunities, to every family.