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Wichita Public Library Closes Its Orchard Park Branch

http://www.wichita.lib.ks.us

The Wichita Public Library is closing one of its eight branches, as well as moving its collections to other larger branches. KMUW’s Deborah Shaar has the story.

The Orchard Park library branch on West Ninth Street closed for good on Friday because it was no longer meeting the needs of its customers.

Director of Libraries Cynthia Berner says the branch is a very small space inside the Orchard Park Recreation Center and its usage has declined.

Berner says the branch has been a part of the community for 34 years.

“It’s a day of mixed emotion," she says. "We know that people will be getting a wide variety of service in the other location but we know a lot of people have special memories of that library in that location.”

Berner says the city will continue the center’s recreation programs.

The Westlink and Evergreen branches are two larger libraries in the service area that will now serve Orchard Park patrons.

Deborah joined the news team at KMUW in September 2014 as a news reporter. She spent more than a dozen years working in news at both public and commercial radio and television stations in Ohio, West Virginia and Detroit, Michigan. Before relocating to Wichita in 2013, Deborah taught news and broadcasting classes at Tarrant County College in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area.