Four point eight, across three hundred and fifty-two reviews. Nothing else in forty-four entries comes close. Not the bookshops, not the Pinellas libraries, not the two Barnes & Noble stores with their thousands of reviews between them. A regional library on Bearss Avenue in Tampa is the best-rated building in this whole project.
It’s also open until nine at night, four nights a week. That’s later than every bookstore and every library in either series.
Four point eight across that many reviews is astonishing for any building, and for a public library it’s cause for a parade. People are hard to please and quick to complain online, so a regional branch that keeps this many of them happy is doing something every library system ought to study.
What is the Jimmie B. Keel Regional Library?
A regional branch of the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library Cooperative at 2902 West Bearss Avenue in Tampa. The system phone is 813-273-3652. Three hundred and fifty-two Google reviews at four point eight.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
Regional is the operative word. Hillsborough runs its system in tiers, and a regional library is a larger building with a deeper collection and more programming than a neighborhood branch, serving a wide catchment instead of a few streets. The card covers the Hillsborough system. Pinellas residents should note this is a separate cooperative from the Pinellas Public Library Cooperative, so a Pinellas card doesn’t work here. Reciprocal arrangements exist between Florida systems but they’re worth checking at the desk instead of assuming.
The children’s building inside the building
This is why the rating is what it is.
The children’s area is large and fully enclosed, separated from the rest of the library. Then, inside that, there’s a separate playroom, separated again from the children’s book area.
Two layers of separation is unusual and it solves two problems at once. The main library stays quiet because the children’s section has walls. The children’s section stays usable for choosing books because the loud play is walled off from that too. Libraries that put story time twenty feet from the quiet tables and then post signs asking for silence infuriate me. Keel solved it the only way that works, with walls, and then did it twice.
A grandparent who has been bringing a grandson for four years, and has now started bringing his younger sister, described the layout and then went through the programming. Story times for preschoolers at different times depending on age. Colouring pages, crayons, small tables scaled for children. Age-banded story times are underrated. A session pitched for a two-year-old doesn’t hold a five-year-old, and a session pitched at five loses a two-year-old entirely. Splitting them is more work for the staff and considerably better for everybody in the room. Age-split story times are the sort of unglamorous effort that wins a four point eight. Nobody outside the room notices it, and every parent in the room does.
Open until nine
Monday through Thursday, ten in the morning until nine at night.
That’s the latest closing time in this entire series of forty-four buildings. The Book Lounge in St. Petersburg matches it on Fridays and Saturdays, and it’s a bar. Everything else in Pinellas shuts by eight at the latest.
Age-split story times are the sort of unglamorous effort that wins a four point eight.
For anybody in north Tampa who works a full day, four nights of library access until nine is a different proposition from the Pinellas norm. You can leave work at six, drive over, and still get two and a half hours. A nine o’clock closing is the best thing a library can do for adults with jobs, and it’s a shame so few manage it. Evening is when most working people finally have their heads free, and Keel is there for them. Friday and Saturday run ten until six. Sunday is closed.
What does Jimmie B. Keel Regional Library offer writers?
Hours and depth, in that order.
A regional library holds more than a branch: a deeper reference collection, more databases, more of the nonfiction that only gets bought once per system. For research that’s the difference between a useful trip and a wasted one.
Combine that with a nine o’clock closing and you have the best evening research building within reach of Clearwater. It’s a strange thing to have to cross a bridge for and worth knowing anyway. A bridge crossing for a library sounds excessive until you’ve needed the one book in the system that only the regional branch bought. For serious research I’d make the drive without a second thought.
The staff also get named repeatedly for the ordinary things: getting somebody a library card, walking a first-timer through self-checkout, handing over the right brochure. A first-time visitor wrote a whole review about exactly that and named the person who helped. For the equivalent on the Pinellas side, Seminole has the study rooms and the eight o’clock opening, and Gulfport has the carrels and the outlets.
When is Jimmie B. Keel Regional Library open?
Monday through Thursday from ten in the morning until nine at night. Friday and Saturday ten until six. Closed Sunday.
West Bearss Avenue runs east to west across north Tampa, with the library’s own parking lot and a spacious approach.
From Clearwater it’s around twenty-five to thirty minutes across the Courtney Campbell Causeway and up, depending on traffic. From Oldsmar or Safety Harbor, considerably less.
It pairs naturally with Mojo Books & Records near USF, which is a few minutes east on Fowler and open until eight, for books, vinyl and a coffee bar in the same trip.
My take
Cross the bridge for this one. It stays open until nine four nights a week, the latest of anything in the series, and a regional collection holds the books a branch never bought. That combination makes it the best evening research building within reach of Clearwater. Leave work at six and you’ll still get two and a half hours. Parents get an enclosed children’s area with a separate playroom beyond it.
Where it sits
Three Hillsborough libraries make this list and they divide clearly.
Town ‘N Country Regional is the closest one to Pinellas, with a used bookstore on the ground floor and private study rooms upstairs. John F. Germany downtown holds the Tampa history collection and four floors of reference.
Jimmie B. Keel is the family one and the late one. The best-rated building in either series, an enclosed children’s wing with a playroom inside it, and lights on until nine four nights a week.
If you have young children and live anywhere near north Tampa, this is your library and the 4.8 explains itself. I’d hold it up as the standard every regional library in Florida should be measured against, and I hope the people running it know how many families they’ve made happy. I’d hold it up as the standard every regional library in Florida should be measured against, and I hope the people running it know how many families they’ve made happy.
