About the East Oakland Community Library at 81st Avenue
In 2003, the Oakland Public Library and the Oakland Unified School District began a partnership to create a branch library in East Oakland. A year later, the Oakland Public Library received $6.5 million in funding from the California Reading and Literacy Improvement and Public Library Construction and Renovation Bond Act of 2000 (Proposition 14) for this exciting new joint project.
At 21,000 square feet, the library will be the largest in the branch system when it opens. Located on the same campus as EnCompass Academy and ACORN Woodland Elementary School, two of Oakland’s small public schools, the facility will serve as a school library for those students and will offer essential information services to residents of an increasingly multicultural and multilingual neighborhood. The shared-use facility will realize construction and operational cost savings for both the school district and the Oakland Public Library system and bring coordinated resources to the community.
The total cost of the new branch library is $14.3 million. In addition to the $6.5 million from the state, $4.5 million in funding comes from the Oakland Redevelopment Agency, and $497,065 from the Oakland Unified School District, which also provides the land. Generous foundations and other donors are providing additional funds for furnishings, fixtures, and equipment.
Features and amenities at the 81st Avenue branch
• Story time and family reading alcove
• Children’s multi-purpose room
• Teen services area with stepped seating
• Pre-school and family areas
• Quiet reading room for adults
• Internet café
• Copy center
• Community meeting room
• Library classroom
• Computer lab equipped with 62 Computers
• Cabling and communications media in classroom and community meeting rooms