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The library's history timeline and locations record; the 2007 bond coverage; the system's Our Next Chapter plan
Roseland's branch opened in 1977 as the Clay Branch — named at its birth for the township it was built to serve, which is the institutional fact the town's service rests on — and was later renamed for Roger B. Francis, the director of 1952–1977 in whose last year it opened. The present branch: 52655 North Ironwood Road, South Bend 46635 (17,578 square feet of public space; two meeting rooms), some two miles south of the town line in Clay Township, the only branch in the township and the northernmost on the Ironwood corridor. It keeps the system's standard full branch hours (Mon–Thu 9–7, Fri–Sat 9–5, Sundays closed) — pointedly not the reduced tier of the small-town branches at Lakeville and North Liberty, because Clay's branch serves a suburban township's population, Roseland's 854 among them. Its building course: the 2007 bond issue ($18 million system-wide) funded replacing the existing Francis building with one "of nearly double the size"; the new building was under construction in June 2008; and its opening year was not reached in any carrier opened (G-LB-2) — the gap is registered rather than filled with the neighboring German Branch's year, 2009, which belongs to German. The branch stands active in November 2026 and is scheduled in the system's ten-year revitalization plan, Our Next Chapter (begun 2024), for its own turn in 2028. At boundary size, the next-nearest branches: German (52807 Lynnewood Avenue, built 2009 for German Township), west; and Centre (1150 East Kern Road, opened 1999), south — each its own township's, as Francis is Clay's.