Last Thursday, city council heard presentations from the three contenders vying for the opportunity to design the new central library. The contenders are Barnes Gromatzky Kosarek Architects and Taniguchi with Holzman Moss, Lake | Flato and Shepley Bulfinch, and PageSoutherlandPage and Patkau Architects. The presentations and pdfs of the proposals are on the city's website. Also on that page are comment forms soliciting public comment on each proposal. Public input will be only accepted through Friday, October 31, 2008. The presentations and pdfs provide a lot of information about the design process and the teams' relevant past work, but they don't contain much information about what any of the teams would actually build at the site. ...

C-Span's Book TV will be stopping by Faulk Central Library this Saturday to offer tours of their nifty production-studio-within-a-bus and to interview local nonfiction authors in said bus. UT Prof Evan B. Carton, author of Patriotic Treason: John Brown and the Soul of America, will be interviewed at 3:30pm, and poet/activist Raul Salinas (most recently author of My Weapon Is My Pen: Raul Salinas and the Jail Machine) will be interviewed at 4:15pm. This......

If you've been to your library branch in the past couple of months, you've probably been handed a yellow flyer about this proposition. We've got a couple of them crumpled in between library books sitting on our shelf. Proposition Six, in ballot language:“The issuance of $90,000,000 in tax supported General Obligation Bonds and Notes for constructing and equipping a new Central Library facility and acquiring land and interests in land and property necessary to......

Austinites who frequent the Town Lake shores may be in for a nice change of scenery - half a decade from now. Pending a vote by the City Council this afternoon and public approval later this year, the John Henry Faulk Central Library at Eighth and Guadalupe is slated to be replaced by a brand new 300,000 sq ft facility where the Green Water Treatment Plant now resides, mere blocks west of City Hall......