Nine Chicago Public Library Branches Add Sunday Hours Today

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Starting this afternoon, nine public library branches in Chicago are adding Sunday hours, and by next fall officials expect every library in the city to be open on Sundays.

The Portage-Cragin, Northtown, Dunning, Little Italy, Toman, Hall, Whitney Young, West Pullman, and Chicago Lawn branches will be open from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays.

Until now, the only libraries that were open on Sundays were the Harold Washington Library Center downtown; two regional libraries, Sulzer and Woodson; and three branch libraries – Austin, Richard M. Daley, and Douglass – which added Sunday hours earlier this year, after renovations began at Legler, which is being transformed into a regional library on the West Side.

"For Chicago to thrive, we have to have all of our residents – especially our young people – connected to rich, engaging, and safe environments where they can be empowered to explore their passions and talent," Mayor Lori Lightfoot said on Monday.

Lightfoot included an $18 million property tax hike in her 2020 budget plan to open all 77 branch libraries on Sundays.

The mayor and Library Commissioner Andrea Telli said they expect every library branch to be open on Sundays by next fall.

"The core mission of public libraries is to provide free and equitable access to information, experiences, and resources. So, of course, why shouldn't that access be available seven days a week? Every hour a library is open is an hour where a new reader, a new resident, or a lifelong learner can experience – as Mayor Lightfoot has called – the magic of libraries," Telli said.

Sunday hours at the rest of the city's libraries will be rolled out in waves each quarter of next year, spread out over the entire city.

"We just want to make sure that there isn't any one area of the city that's very saturated with Sunday hours and one area of the city that is an information desert, so to speak. So we're going to try to roll out the opening of libraries very equitably across our three districts, across the entire city from north to south," Telli said.

The library will add 177 staff to open all of its locations on Sundays.