photo by: Shawn Valverde

File photo of the Lawrence Public Library on Friday, July 26, 2024.

The Lawrence Public Library board approved a new community vision plan that its leader hopes can help the library be more flexible as it grows and add new amenities for residents.

The library’s Board of Trustees voted Monday night to officially adopt the plan, which will serve as its master plan for how to grow sustainably. Much of the focus will be about improving the main building, making downtown more vibrant and expanding the library’s presence into other parts of the city.

The newly adopted plan, which was crafted with the help of consultants from Margaret Sullivan Studio, includes frameworks for creating 14 “activation strategies” that can serve as options for the library to deepen its community impact.

Some of the library’s current projects align with the new plan — like the project to build a pavilion on its outdoor lawn — but many of the strategies in the plan came directly from public feedback developed during the master plan process that asked residents about amenities they wanted, whether in the library or the Lawrence community more broadly.

Many of the strategies in the plan were highly desired amenities from the public’s responses, including a community garden and creating an immersive children’s museum space. These growth strategies outlined in the report aim to tap into the library’s strength — its ability to be a center for culture, education and social and community life — and finding community partners to expand its services and serve more people.

For example, the plan outlines potential ways the library could create an immersive children’s museum space. Those ideas include adding a branch in the southeastern corner of Lawrence, or it could look for opportunities to co-locate that type of experience with other partners. The plan lists specifictypes of activities those spaces should have — like play spaces for “sensory exploration” or “activity kits” for early learners. The plan also lists potential partners the library could work with.

Brad Allen, the library’s executive director, said in a statement to the Journal-World he believes the plan is “adaptive and flexible,” and it will allow the library to “respond nimbly to opportunities (for growth) as they arise.”

One of the keys to the library’s plans is to ensure it is finding ways to collaborate with other organizations, according to Allen. With the range of goals, there may be future questions of how to fund or create certain programs. As the library looks to better serve residents, Allen thinks getting other groups together will be crucial to achieve those goals.

“We know that the library is just one piece of a larger ecosystem, and partnering with organizations that share our vision is paramount to success,” Allen said.