Kenmore to get a new library!

In the middle of all the gloomy news, one small ray of joyful news hit Kenmore this week. The last of the Akron Summit library branches to be rebuilt, the Kenmore branch will appear on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams by 2008 on property located next to its current location.

All the new branch libraries I have visited around the area are very well designed. I particularly like the Odom Branch (formerly Lane Wooster). It has some stunning art work inside and out. The mural from the former building was re-done on the new one. Added to the portraits of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass is the face of Sojourner Truth. Yay! Diversity rules!

In the library's community room is a portrait with faces of some of Akron's stand-out African-American citizens including Vern Odom, who gives the library and the boulevard in front of it his name. Odom was a community activist and former head of the Akron Urban League. The new Urban League building going up in conjunction with the the new Helen Arnold school is going to be named after Odom as well.

Places like Kenmore and the neighborhood around Lane Field next to the Odom Branch library are the ones that most need the services of a public library. I'm looking forward to summer walks to the new library in Kenmore.