Richardson is a city in Collin and Dallas Counties in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 91,803, while according to a 2007 estimate, the population had grown to 101,400. Richardson is a part of Dallas' Silicon Prairie, and is home to the Telecom Corridor, which is a very large technology business center that includes offices for 5,700 companies, including 600 technology companies, such as Nortel, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Tellabs, Texas Instruments, and AT&T. It is also the corporate headquarters of Fossil, Inc.
In 2006, Richardson was selected as the 15th best place to live in the United States by Money magazine.[3]
In 2007 the Morgan Quitno 14th Annual America's Safest and Most Dangerous Cities Awards were announced, and Richardson was named the 69th safest city in America. In the same study Richardson ranked the 5th safest city in Texas.
The roots of the Richardson Public Library date back to 1947 when a branch of the Dallas County Library was established in a section of the Cash Dry Goods store on East Main Street in downtown Richardson. The fledgling library collection numbered about 400 volumes and was managed by Jessie Durham the store's proprietor. The City Council established the library as a city department in 1958 and in 1959 the library moved into a newly constructed building at 310 Tyler Street. This new library was just under 6,000 square feet in size and was build at a cost of $100,000.
Richardson was experiencing rapid growth in the 1960s and 70s and the library facility soon became inadequate for community needs. The current facility was constructed at a cost of $2 million and opened December 1st, 1970. The new library was 76,000 in size and contained four floors of which two were finished out and put into use. The basement was finished in 1980 for the reference collection and services. 1995 saw another expansion which finished the upper floor and renovated the three previously opened floors. The most recent renovation occurred in 2006 when the Youth Services department was expanded and other collections and services rearranged. In 2008 the library has a collection of about 250,000 items and circulates just under 1,000,000 items per year
|
