Staff of the Bowling Green Public Library met with residents and community leaders Tuesday night in the area around the Sugar Maple Square branch, which, along with the nearby Digital Depot branch library, will close so their stocks can be consolidated in a new branch in the Greenwood area on the other side of town.

Library staff said they wanted to know which mobile services to play up in the area now that the stationary branches are closing.

Residents didn't want to hear about extant mobile services, however; their message to the library was: Stay here.

About 20 people from the area, plus several from the Housing Authority of Bowling Green and more from the library, came to the meeting.

Octavia Mason said she and her son use the Sugar Maple library often; her son is in the reading program at a nearby day-care. Closing the Sugar Maple branch, even if it's replaced with a small satellite facility, would probably leave inadequate service for her family and neighbors - especially in computers, she said.

“I think it's sad, actually, because the kids need it,” Mason said. “Some of these kids, this is the only library experience they get.”

The meeting was useful, but more needs to be done to show community interest, she said.

“The community really needs to come together for this library,” Mason said.

Library Director Alisa Carmichael said the decision to close the two branches came long before this summer's budget crunch, in which Warren County cut its library funding in half. The decision came about because use of the Sugar Maple branch had fallen off, and the library had a chance to buy a building - rather than pay rent, as it does at Sugar Maple - to serve the rapidly growing area across Interstate 65, she said.

The county has now created a special taxing district that will not only increase the library's funding but turn it into a true countywide system, so plans are starting for eventual expansion of services; but money from that district won't start coming in until December 2008, Carmichael said. The Sugar Maple branch is scheduled to close in December .

George Peterson, on the board of directors of the housing authority's Learning Centers, said the library gives the impression of abandoning the least-served segment of the community - poorer families on the city's north side, many without home computers or regular transportation - in favor of the affluent area around Greenwood, where residents not only have home computers and educational resources but can drive to the library.

For some in the Sugar Maple area, it would be a 45-minute walk to the main library on Center Street, he said.

He and others urged the library to use the four months until the Sugar Maple branch closes to find another permanent location in the area.

The housing authority has suggested that the library place a mini-branch in a building the housing authority owns on Graham Avenue, Carmichael said. That building is already wired for computers, she said.

Housing Authority Education Director Donna Workman pointed out the Delafield Community Center building, sitting empty across the street from the Sugar Maple branch, as another possible new library location.

Housing Authority Executive Director Abraham Williams and Howard Bailey, associate vice president for Student Affairs and Development at Western Kentucky University, urged creation of a community advisory committee to consult with the library on service decisions in the area, and about a dozen volunteers quickly raised their hands.

Carmichael said the library board would next meet at 4 p.m. Aug. 27 and offered to come back to the committee after that meeting.

Bailey asked if the library board would make any decisions about what to do in the area at that meeting, and Carmichael said that was possible.

Members of the new committee immediately said they wanted to talk to library staff and board members before any such decisions might be made, and Carmichael agreed to hold a meeting at 6 p.m. Aug. 23, again at the Sugar Maple branch.