Photo: IFLA / WLIC 2026
By Vinicius Flores, PhD
Marketing Communications Manager · PhD in Communication
Mesa Public Library has a habit of going first. It opened Arizona’s first library makerspace about a decade ago, when few libraries had one. In October 2023, it opened the Express Library in Monterey Park, Arizona’s first fully unstaffed branch and one of only two in the country at the time.
Then came its fourth full-service branch. And that one was named the best new public library in the world.
Mesa Gateway Library opened on December 6, 2025, on the edge of the Great Park in southeast Mesa. The 28,000-square-foot library took about eighteen months to build, was designed by Richärd Kennedy Architects, and was Mesa’s first new full-service library in thirty years.
In June, IFLA shortlisted Gateway for the James Bennett Public Library of the Year Award, making it one of four finalists selected from nineteen applications across nine countries. On August 10, at the 90th World Library and Information Congress in Busan, South Korea, it won.
By then, Gateway was already drawing attention beyond the library world. Days before the award, it had been featured on CBS.
Gateway earns it. A pleated roof forms a canopy over the desert site, pulling the program areas together beneath it in what the jury described as a market hall. A digital art wall greets visitors at the entrance. On the south side, a shaded patio looks out over the lake and the park. Jury chair Jakob Lærkes called the building “a true role model,” with the library scoring highly across every criterion the award measures: architecture, organization, sustainability and service.
Two of the four shortlisted libraries use Bibliotheca technology. West Las Vegas is one. Mesa is the other. It has worked with Bibliotheca for years, using selfChecks, automated materials handling, security gates and holds lockers, and the open+ system that made the Express Library possible.
Gateway is the first Mesa library designed around that infrastructure rather than fitted with it afterward. Hold lockers are built into the facade. Sorting happens behind the scenes. Self-checkout sits naturally in the flow of the room. And Romi, a library robot, can lead patrons directly to the shelf they are looking for.
Romi can also handle borrowing and returns, search the catalog and serve as an information point when staff are busy. At Gateway, its current role is primarily wayfinding.
“Romi continues to evolve as more options are added to the robot,” said Polly Bonnett, Library Director for the Mesa Public Library system.
It also has a face. Its expressions change with the situation, giving the technology a personality that works especially well around younger visitors. Ask, and Romi will even take your photograph and send you the picture.
Bibliotheca technology at Gateway Library in Mesa, Arizona, winner of the 2026 IFLA/Systematic Public Library of the Year Award.
None of this is technology for its own sake. It takes friction out of the room — out of the queue, out of the search, out of the routine things that should not require help. The building does the same at a human scale. Gateway has a Sensory Room, with lighting, acoustics, colors and furnishings chosen with neurodivergent visitors in mind, and a Nursing Room next door.
Mesa became the first Autism Certified City in the United States in 2019, after training city staff and local businesses. Gateway is what that commitment looks like when it reaches the library floor. A caregiver worried about a child becoming overwhelmed in public has somewhere to go without having to leave the library.
Two years earlier, Bonnett described the Express Library as a chance worth taking. The library that followed went on to win the world’s top prize for a new public library.
About Gateway Library
Gateway Library is the fourth full-service branch of Mesa Public Library, which serves more than 500,000 residents in Mesa, Arizona. Opened in December 2025, the 28,000-square-foot library is Mesa’s first new full-service branch in three decades.
Designed by Richärd Kennedy Architects, the project was recognized with a 2024 Library Interior Design Award from the International Interior Design Association and the American Library Association. The library also reflects Mesa’s broader commitment to accessibility and inclusion. The city has been designated an Autism Certified City by IBCCES since 2019.
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