New Orleans, Louisiana

Reading Renewal

FEMA obligates more than $12 million to help the New Orleans Library system rebuild after Katrina. More than $4 million of the funding is specifically dedicated to the library in New Orleans East.

Hurricane Katrina totally devastated the library system. We lost 8 of our libraries out of 12. All of the libraries were damaged to some degree. We had to lay off 80% of our staff, which has still been a huge task for us now to re-group.

Some of our heavily damaged facilities actually were maxed out by FEMA, they were over the 50 percent damage mark. Were happy about those because it's total replacement value for those libraries, with the current code upgrades. So we're very excited about that and weve been working well with FEMA.

The New Orleans East was our regional library, one of our 2 regional locations that we had system wide, which had a large circulating collection, a total loss.

6 feet of water and it stayed in that building for several weeks and mold and mildew overtook the building.

It was just demolished a couple of weeks ago and it's making way for a new location. It'll be true regional size, we consider it a regional location, about 12 thousand square feet. Were actually doubling it in size.

That's the plus side of all of this. We actually get to build a system, just like we need it and our citizens deserve it.

We are anticipating an 18 month construction period, so within the next 2 years. Libraries, nationally, are economic drivers, so were hoping that this library will do that very thing. It's right in what's considered the town center of New Orleans East, so were in a great location on a major thoroughfare.

So were excited that this will bring people back as well as businesses.