Exciting Website Changes Are Here!

I am so pleased that the Library’s website improvements, which make our site more user-friendly, are now live. Our staff has been working for some time with the City’s Web Team to reduce the clutter and place items you look for the most in easy to find locations. Searching the catalog is our # 1 hit, so we put the search box right at the top along with your account login. We added quick links to our most popular hits. Graphical news features highlight programs and services of special interest.

Check out San Diego Public Library’s
new user-friendly website.

We are receiving positive feedback from users like Lisa Schattman who wrote, “"Great job! So much better than the old site!!! Not only more attractive, but much easier to find what I'm looking for. Thanks, SDPL!" This is such a testament to what a fabulous job our eBranch Team and the City’s Web Team did in upgrading our site to make it more responsive to our user needs! 

Recently we updated our event calendar, which makes it easier to find events at a glance. Other online improvements are coming soon. Within the next month or so there will be an upgrade to our catalog, which will give it a more contemporary look, make searching more like Google, and highlight New York Times Best Sellers. The library is on the technologic move. Stay tuned for more exciting details.

A Great New Alliance for New Central

I was so excited last week to meet Dr. Helen V. Griffith. She is the newly appointed executive director of the Downtown Charter High School (DCH), which will be on the new Central Library’s sixth and seventh floors and will eventually serve 500 high school students. After talking to her for just a brief time I knew she was the right person for the position. What a dynamo! She is so enthusiastic about wrapping together both formal and self-directed education for the DCH students. She has already hit the ground running and has started to put into place all the elements for getting the doors to the new school to open in the fall of 2013.

Dr. Helen Griffith
Executive Director
Downtown Charter High School

Dr. Griffith grew up in San Diego, and like me, she has a passionate commitment to this community and helping students make the most of the fact that their school is in the new Central Library. With a fabulous new Teen Space, a homework center, a computer lab, and ready access to library materials and librarians to help them, these students will have all the resources they need to help them succeed.


The excitement for new Central Library is building. Having Dr. Griffith onboard at DCH is one more step in realizing the vision of the new Central Library as a state-of-the-art centerpiece of learning and civic engagement in San Diego.