Rohnert Park - Cotati Regional Library

About

The Rohnert Park Cotati Regional Library is a community library that provides a collection of 100,000 items, internet access and hosts many events.

Story

A branch of the Sonoma County Library was established in Cotati in 1946. It was moved in 1952 and again in 1967 to enlarged quarters on College View Drive in Rohnert Park. In 1976, a 10,000 square foot building was built on Hunter Drive, funded jointly by the City of Rohnert Park and County of Sonoma Federal Revenue Sharing Funds. Twenty-seven years later, the current 24,000 square foot building opened, in June 2003, funded by Rohnert Park Community Certificates of Participation.

The Rohnert Park-Cotati Regional Library features a high-ceilinged reading room with a fireplace, steamed European beech furnishings, and granite countertops at the service desks. A sky-lit dome in the toddler’s reading area displays a storybook mural created by Bob Eisenberg, titled “Celebrate the Joy of Reading”. The Library’s exterior landscape includes Poet’s Alley, where stacks of books flank the processional space and a River of Words is embedded in the pavement. The Pool of Sounds, at the center of the Story Maze, is composed of cobblestones carved with sounds common to all human languages, and there is also a reading grove, a History of Written Language Wall, and a monument to the Ancient Library of Alexandria, Egypt.

The Library provides a collection of 100,000 items, ample computers for public usage, a community room, a conference room, and a Friends of the Library book store. To accommodate future expansion, the Library has been designed to allow the addition of another 16,000 square feet on a second floor.