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At a ribbon cutting March 16, Landrieu, with members of the New Orleans City Council, Broadmoor Improvement Association members and funding agencies, traced the genesis of the library’s reopening. Neighborhood residents had gathered rain or shine in the months after Hurricane Katrina, when the neighborhood itself barely had any services, to ensure a library would return. Inside the rebuilt library — a sleek, LEED-certified, 9,000-square-foot space with classrooms, modern lighting and a cafe — a dozen computers guard aisles of books, surrounded by inspirational literary quotes on the walls.

It was the first of several library reopenings scheduled for 2012. Following Rosa Keller, the New Orleans Public Library (NOPL) opened two more (one in Lakeview, another in Gentilly) in the same week. In April, it reopened a location in eastern New Orleans. This summer, another will open in Algiers, and plans begin later this year for a branch in Treme. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina and the federal floods destroyed many NOPL locations beyond repair.

”When she’s at her best, New Orleans is better than any place in the world,” said Landrieu, who has repeated the refrain often, to applause. The libraries, he added, were built ”how they’ve always supposed to be.”

The libraries are the beneficiaries of several grants totaling millions of dollars; FEMA, Community Development Block Grants, bonds, and, in Broadmoor’s case, the Carnegie Corporation and Clinton Global Initiative, all provided significant dollars — more than $30 million — to rebuild the libraries.

With four (and soon to be five) new libraries in its current fleet of 14, NOPL, headed by new city librarian Charles Brown, is poised to usher in a wave of community rebuilding efforts, literacy programs, writing workshops and, of course, a circulation of books, e-books, magazines, CDs and DVDs the size of which New Orleans has not seen since Katrina. Can it keep up?

”It’s one of the many signs that their neighborhood and the city is coming back,” says Brown, who was hired as city librarian in November 2011. Brown previously served as city librarian in Charlotte, N.C., which suffered severe budget cuts and was forced to close four of its 24 libraries when the library system lost $10 million in 18 months.

”One small library was really a community anchor there,” he says. ”That was the most wrenching of decisions that had to be made. Yet there were two regional libraries within approximately five miles of that location in an area that was relatively affluent with a great deal of mobility. … Nevertheless, it was unpopular, but the library had no real alternative. We couldn’t support the 24 locations it had.”

Rebuilding the libraries in New Orleans was one thing. (Brown arrived well after plans were in place and ground was broken on new library projects.) But operating dollars for staff, services and other projects is another. NOPL is funded nearly exclusively through millages, which average about $7.8 million for NOPL each year.

”This year the library has dipped into its reserves to open the new locations,” Brown says. ”But they’re not open the hours we’d like — most are open 42 hours a week, and they’re closed Fridays and Sundays. But we did maintain the same level of operations at the new facilities we previously offered. That was done with reserve funding.”

The city’s general fund in its projected budget for 2012 doesn’t set aside any funds for NOPL, so NOPL dipped into its reserve to add $4 million to its estimated $8 million from millage. Brown says he plans to discuss potential funding strategies with Landrieu and City Council. (The Landrieu administration did not comment when asked whether the mayor would oppose hiking millage for library resources.)

”The reserves will be adequate for the next year or two,” Brown says. ”At this point we could not maintain the current level of services with just the millage we’re receiving.”