Mayor creates city parks, county library parternship

Bloomington Mayor Mark Kruzan announced a partnership between the City of Bloomington Parks and Recreation Department and the Monroe County Public Library in hopes of enhancing library services at the Banneker Community Center's Evans-Porter Library. \nThe establishment of this satellite location in Banneker, located at 930 W. 7th St., is an attempt to better serve nearby neighborhood residents who will now have access to the library's resources without traveling to the main location on Kirkwood. It also launched the fourth of six Community Collaborations that Kruzan pledged would be declared within 60 days.\n"The library offers a wealth of knowledge in books and resources and we are excited to collaborate to extend these services to the broader community," Kruzan said. "This new program will provide west side residents with convenient access to library resources without having to travel very far." \nMCPL will provide the first collection of library materials along with shelves and desks for their satellite library at the Banneker Community Center. MCPL is also helping with cataloguing the books and expanding access to the Internet to allow their entire collection to be viewed. \nThe Banneker Community Center, once an all-black school, dedicated their library the Evans-Porter Library last year to honor two of its former teachers, Alice Evans and Georgia Porter. Until the recent partnership, Banneker only maintained books people donated, now they will have a larger collection of much newer books catalogued by MCPL. \nCindy Gray, the MCPL director, said that this is just the first step of many to secure library services in the county and is just a foundation for more collaboration.