Librarian Becky Nichols of the Selma-Dallas County Public Library has a theme for the next 100 years of the library – access.

“It’s all about access,” she said recently as shelves were being moved to make way for an enlarged information center on the second floor. “People’s access to resources, computers

and assistance. That’s why we’re enlarging the Pauline and Jerome Siegel Information Center on the second floor.”

The library’s official celebration of its first 100 years will be a big block party on Tuesday, June 22. “I’ve asked each department to develop a vision of where it needs to go in the next 100 years,” she said. “It’s very important that we have a clear vision of the future and take steps now to move into it.”

Nichols used full-body motion to described the location of the area where the library’s computers are now stationed.

Now they’re out in the open. Soon they will be in an expanded enclosed area, with glass, a counter, an area, she said, that will make it into its own department, as is presently the case with the Reference Department.

“The enlarged, enclosed space will allow users of the computers to check in at a counter, to have more privacy and it will enable library staff to help them more effectively in the use of the computers,” she said.

“We (the staff) need to be able to give users of the library more and more individual assistance to enable them to get the information they want.”

The first step in the changes Nichols envisions was the moving of three shelves on the second floor to make space for the expanded information center.

There to do the physical labor was a team from the Department of Public Works led by its director, Tommy Smith.

“They are fabulous,” Nichols said. “They were here at 7:30, and it took them three hours to finish a job that we thought might take all day.”

Not only the three shelves but the 1,000 volumes lining them – the history and literature sections –

had to be moved by the public works team to other areas in the library.

Nichols pointed out that the moving of the books will contribute to the goal of access.

“Now,” she said, “these books will be more accessible to the persons wanting to use them.”

Nichols is excited about the big centennial celebration on the afternoon of June 22, which will be the grand finale of many months of activities celebrating the library’s place in the life of the community, but she’s even more excited about the future service of the library to the community. “That’s why we’re here,” she said, “to meet the ever-expanding information needs of the citizens of this community.”