By Crystal McGough
Copy Editor
The Rock School Center has long been a beloved landmark in the Pinson community, but as of this Sunday, the old building will be given a new heart.
The Pinson Public Library, which opened in the back part of the city hall building in 2011, has moved into the main part of the Rock School Center and will be holding its grand opening on Jan. 13 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. There will be a ribbon cutting ceremony with Mayor Hoyt Sanders and the Pinson City Council, as well as some special guests, and refreshments inside while patrons get to know the new building.
“There is one kind of theme for this relocation for me,” Pinson Library Director Allison Scanlan said. “Everyone in the community loves the Rock School. That’s a big part of Pinson’s legacy and so many people love it. We are so fortunate that the outside of the building is the same, the rocks are still there. There’s the building they know and love, but we have kind of changed the heart of the building. The heart is now the library. The people are getting their building back. This is something that they can now visit, enjoy and love, hopefully even more than they already loved it.”
Along with a new location, the library also has a new logo, designed by Scanlan’s spouse, which ties into the theme by depicting the “iconic shape” of the Rock School building surrounding the name of the library.
“That symbol is so iconic to people,” Scanlan said. “I want something to show: here’s this building, it’s the same building, this is the building you’re familiar with, but the inside has changed. It’s now the Pinson Public Library. That was my message with the logo and fortunately it was carried out amazingly well. We’re very happy with that.”
The city of Pinson purchased the Rock School Center in 2013. According to Scanlan, the building had not been used as a school or daycare since the 1990s.
“It was almost three years ago that they officially announced that they were looking at putting the library in there,” Scanlan said. “The work started with the roof in the summer of 2017. They replaced the roof. Then Seay Construction started the actual renovation in the spring of 2018.”
Scanlan said that the original part of the school in the front section of the building was fully renovated to accommodate the library.
“It’s all new inside,” she said. “The building has been adapted to suit the needs of our library perfectly. We have much more space there than we had at our previous location and we have a larger event room, so we can have our summer reading program, events for children, story time, all of our big regular events that we do at the library. We have study rooms, too, which is something that we did not have before. We have space for additional computers, so we are adding more public computers for our library patrons to use.”
The “lower classrooms” in the Rock School Center will continue to be used for city offices, including offices for the Parks and Recreation department, Scanlan said. The auditorium is currently rented and used as a sanctuary for a local church, as well as used as a polling place for elections.
The Pinson Public Library has been closed since Oct. 3, 2018, for the transition from the old building to the new.
“Our collection is just over 18,000 items,” Scanlan said. “That’s books, movies, tablets, all the things that are available for checkout. So our library did a massive inventory and, as we packed things, we also got the opportunity to do some little pet projects that normally we wouldn’t have the opportunity to do when the library is open. Our DVDs are now organized by genre, so that makes them easier to browse.”
Scanlan started working at the Pinson Public Library in 2013 as the Youth Services librarian, under former director April Wallace. When Wallace left, Scanlan became the new library director in March 2017.
“As soon as I started working at the Pinson Public Library, I just immediately loved it,” she said. “It’s small enough that you get to know everybody, but we’re also so busy and we get to do so much for the community. The city of Pinson has just been tremendous in their support of the library and that they’ve allowed us to grow, and as we’ve grown, they’ve allowed us to make changes. They’re just great people. The people who visit the library, but also the people who work for the city, the mayor and council.”
Pinson Public Library has received many awards and grants during it’s seven years, including the American Library Association’s Bookapalooza grant, which provided the library with about 1,500 award winning and award eligible books, and the American Dream grant, which helped the library provide ESL classes to the community and expand its Spanish Language collection.
“Those are some of the big ones,” Scanlan said. “We are (also) a silver award winner from the Alabama Public Library Service. They have standard awards that they issue each year and we do have a silver award from them.”
The library has also received grants to pay teenagers for summer internships and jobs at the library.
“We’re very excited about introducing more opportunities for teenagers,” Scanlan said. “We have a great teen advisory board (a group of teen volunteers who help out at the library). We have a good core group of about 15 of those teenagers. I would love to be able to do more with them, give them more volunteering and work experience.”
Scanlan said that she is also looking forward to continuing the library’s 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten program at the new location. The program, which Scanlan launched immediately after becoming library director, allows children ages birth-5 who have not yet started Kindergarten to receive rewards for every 100 books that their parents or guardians read to them and record in a reading log. When the children have had 1,000 books read to them, they get to participate in a graduation ceremony at the library.
“Since my background is in youth services, I am very passionate about early literacy,” Scanlan said. “We’ve had one graduation ceremony so far, and we actually have three (kids) right now who are ready to graduate. I’m sure once we open we’ll have (more). So one of the first things that we’ll do in our new building is we’ll have a little graduation ceremony for the kids who have completed the program. Those are some of the things that we’re looking forward to the most. And expanding our collection! We have room now! Everything is out on the shelves and there’s plenty of room to grow, so I’m so excited about that.”
After Sunday’s grand opening, the Pinson Public Library will resume its regular business hours at the new location on Monday, Jan. 14.