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The Tacoma Public Library system serves residents of Tacoma, Washington. It operates eight library branches, which include a central library in downtown Tacoma, two regional locations in north and south Tacoma, and five neighborhood branch locations. Tacoma Public Library has nearly 150,000 registered users, and over 2 million items in circulation. Tacoma Public Library serves a population of 198,100 people.
Tacoma is a midsized urban port city and the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. The city is on Washington's Puget Sound, 32 miles (51 km) southwest of Seattle, 31 miles (50 km) northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and 58 miles (93 km) northwest of Mount Rainier National Park. The population was 198,397, according to the 2010 census. Tacoma is the second-largest city in the Puget Sound area and the third-largest in the state. Tacoma also serves as the center of business activity for the South Sound region, which has a population around 1 million.
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The Main, or central, library is one of 43 Carnegie libraries built in the state of Washington. Carnegie libraries are those built with money donated by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. This particular library was built in 1903. The Main library has been expanded since the original building was erected, and the Carnegie portion of the building now houses the Northwest Room and the Handforth Gallery. The Northwest Room holds a special collection of information on Tacoma and the Pacific Northwest. It includes photography, genealogy, rare books, and newspapers. The Handforth Gallery displays the work of local artists year round.
Andrew Carnegiekar-NAY-gee was a Scottish-American industrialist, business magnate, and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and became one of the richest Americans in history. He became a leading philanthropist in the United States and in the British Empire. During the last 18 years of his life, he gave away $350 million to charities, foundations, and universities – almost 90 percent of his fortune. His 1889 article proclaiming "The Gospel of Wealth" called on the rich to use their wealth to improve society, and stimulated a wave of philanthropy.
The Pacific Northwest (PNW), sometimes referred to as Cascadia, is a geographic region in western North America bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and (loosely) by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common conception includes the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) and the U.S. states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Broader conceptions reach north into Southeast Alaska and Yukon, south into northern California, and east to the Continental Divide to include Western Montana and parts of Wyoming. Narrower conceptions may be limited to the coastal areas west of the Cascade and Coast mountains. The variety of definitions can be attributed to partially overlapping commonalities of the region's history, culture, geography, society, and other factors.
Photography is the art, application and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed in many fields of science, manufacturing, and business, as well as its more direct uses for art, film and video production, recreational purposes, hobby, and mass communication.
Tacoma Public Library offers the use of computers, databases, books, DVDs, music, ebooks, downloadable audio books, as well as programming for children, teens and adults. The library director is Kate Larsen [1]
