Alamogordo Public Library
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| Established | 1900 |
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| Location | 920 Oregon Avenue, Alamogordo, New Mexico 88310 |
| Coordinates | 32°53′56.59″N 105°56′40.33″W / 32.8990528°N 105.9445361°WCoordinates: 32°53′56.59″N 105°56′40.33″W / 32.8990528°N 105.9445361°W |
| Collection | |
| Size | 112,000 (2007) |
| Access and use | |
| Circulation | 250,875 (2007) |
| Population served | 54,772 |
| Members | 26,022 (2007) |
| Other information | |
| Budget | $900,000 |
| Director | Sharon Rowe |
| Staff | 14 FTE |
| Website | ci |
Alamogordo Public Library is the public library serving Alamogordo, New Mexico and Otero County, New Mexico. The library has extensive collections of Spanish-language and German-language books and of materials related to the Western writer Eugene Manlove Rhodes.
Alamogordo Public Library first opened on March 1, 1900. Alamogordo was unusual for a Southwestern town at the time in that it was a planned community, the planning being carried out by Charles Bishop Eddy's and John Arthur Eddy's Alamogordo Improvement Company. The Eddys saw a library as being necessary for their community and they gave financial support to the Alamogordo Woman's Club to start the library. Ownership passed to an offshoot, the Alamogordo Library Association, and then to the Civic League. The Civic League retained ownership of the library until 1958 when it was sold for one dollar to the City of Alamogordo.
The library had resided in a series of rented rooms until 1962 when a library building was constructed at 920 Oregon Avenue. The building was 10,280 square feet (955 m2) and cost $175,000. John Reed of Albuquerque was the architect. The library building was doubled in size in 1987 to 20,764 square feet (1,929.0 m2) at a cost of $871,042. The architect was again John Reed.
In 2001 a block of land next to the current library was donated to the city to be the site of a new library building, planned at 40,000 square feet (3,700 m2). Bond elections in 2005 and 2009 to fund construction of the new building failed.
Alamogordo Public Library is a city-owned library, but library cards are free to all residents of Otero County. (County government pays a yearly subsidy to the city for this service; in FY 2008 the subsidy was $35,320.) The library has 112,000 items in its collection, including books, videos, compact discs, and magazines. There are extensive collections of Spanish-language and German-language books. (The German Air Force has a tactical training center at Holloman Air Force Base near Alamogordo, and many German families live in the city.) Inter-library loan services are provided. Through the Alamogordo Public Library's inter-library loan service, patrons can request any type of material that is usually available at a public library, including books, photocopies, microfilm, consumer audio books, music CDs, and DVDs. The library installed a system for automating collection and catalog records in 1995, and the catalog became available over the Internet in 2004.
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