Beyond Books: What the System Runs

as of November 2026

At the branch, beyond books means a meeting room, public computers, and wireless laptops; the system's wider services sit at Main, and two of its headline projects are plans, not services, and print as plans. At North Liberty itself, the branch's own page claims nothing beyond its three features, and this article claims nothing beyond them either. At system level, the record carries: home delivery, described in the board's December 2025 minutes as "offered in support of patrons who are unable to visit the library due to illness or disability"; Studio 304 at Main, a digital media studio with recording rooms, 3D printing, laser cutting, creative software, and cameras, recording equipment, and podcast kits for borrowing; the Community Learning Center, opened 10 January 2022; fine-free lending since January 2022; and the digitization stations and research-by-mail lookups of the local-history department. Meeting and study rooms run across the system — Main's rooms, Centre's two meeting rooms and three study rooms, two meeting rooms each at Francis and German, one each at Lakeville, River Park, Western, Tutt, and North Liberty. The system's scale figures, each from its own record: its branches "serve over a half million members of our community" a year, and the system closed 2022 with more than 585,000 visits and almost two million checkouts. Two items in the board's own December 2025 minutes are named among the 2026 strategic projects — "launch mobile library services" and a "library of things" — and they print here as what they are: planned, not stated anywhere as operating, and not built as current services.