The Long Beach Public Library (LBPL) is an American

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...

library system A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

located in

Long Beach, California Long Beach is a coastal city in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the list of United States cities by population, 44th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 451,307 as of 2022. A charter ci ...

Main Library

The Main Library's first building was funded by a $30,000 donation from Andrew Carnegie and $4,000 of city funds. The Library opened in 1909 within Pacific Park, now known as Lincoln Park, downtown on Pacific Avenue at Broadway. When the building site was condemned for construction of a New Main Library and City Hall building in the late 1970s, the library was moved to a building located on Ximeno Avenue, for a period of about 18 months. In 2015, the Long Beach Public Library became the first library in California to begin circulating

zine A zine ( ; short for ''magazine'' or ''fanzine'') is, as noted on Merriam-Webster’s official website, a magazine that is a “noncommercial often homemade or online publication usually devoted to specialized and often unconventional subject ...

s publicly in its collection. Now the main branch houses a few hundred zines to take home. In January 2019, the Main Library was permanently closed in lieu of the new location, which reopened on September 21, 2019, as the Billie Jean King Main Library, with

King King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...

attending the ribbon-cutting ceremony herself. The building occupies a first floor and lower level at 101 Pacific Avenue, at the intersection of Ocean Boulevard and Pacific Avenue, across the park from its former location. The library displays nine murals titled "9 Children's Stories" by artist Suzanne Miller, created with the support of the

Federal Art Project The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administratio ...

and

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...

Branches

In addition to the main library, there are eleven branches: * Alamitos Branch, Bluff Heights/Franklin/ Carroll Park * Ruth Bach Branch, Lakewood Village * Bay Shore Branch, Belmont Shore/

Naples Naples ( ; ; ) is the Regions of Italy, regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 908,082 within the city's administrative limits as of 2025, while its Metropolitan City of N ...

* Brewitt Branch, Recreation Park/Bryant * Burnett Branch,

Sunrise Sunrise (or sunup) is the moment when the upper rim of the Sun appears on the horizon in the morning, at the start of the Sun path. The term can also refer to the entire process of the solar disk crossing the horizon. Terminology Although the S ...

/ Wrigley * Dana Branch, California Heights * El Dorado Branch, El Dorado Park * Bret Harte Branch, West Long Beach * Los Altos Branch, Los Altos * Michelle Obama Branch, North Long Beach * Mark Twain Branch Hellman The Alamitos branch was constructed by the

in 1938.

References

{{Authority control Libraries in Los Angeles County, California Organizations based in Long Beach, California Library Federal depository libraries Public libraries in California