The Ingleside branch of the city's public library system will finally get a permanent home in a brand-new building, a first since its inception.

The branch's grand opening celebration is slated for Sept. 12 at 1 p.m. at its new location in a building built from the ground up.The Ingleside branch was the only library that did business in a building that wasn't city-owned.

"It's nice because we'll never have to move again," Michelle Jeffers, spokeswoman for the San Francisco Public Library, said. The branch had to move four times since its opening in 1917, she said.

The manager of the branch, Lise Braden, said the Ingleside branch was special because it's the first time that the library gets a building that was built from scratch.

The moving process started last Saturday. The branch has a week to move all the books and equipment over to the new place, located three blocks away from the old building. The old building was leased to them from a private company and was once owned by Bank of America.

"People were coming and saying, 'where are all the tellers?'" Braden said.

In November 2007, the city of San Francisco decided to fund the development project in parts. The rest of the money, $3.7 million, was provided by the library fund, Jeffers said. The construction of the new building started in February 2008 and cost $7 million, including the site, she said.

The Ingleside branch of the library will be a nice addition for City College of San Francisco's students, whose library has seen its hours cut due to budget cuts. City College's library hours had to be cut two and a half hours from Monday through Thursday and several hours on weekends.

"Any kind of library services close to school is terrific for us," said Charles Fracchia, the chair of the Louise and Claude Rosenberg, Jr. Library and Learning Resource Center at City College. "We are going to give the new branch some publicity here at our library," he said.

SF State's J. Paul Leonard Library should not be affected by the Ingleside branch, said Darlene Tong, the head of Information, Research, and Instructional Services at SF State. "The collections are so different, so I don't think there is a huge overlap between an academic library and a branch library," she said.

Also, SF State's library hours haven't been impacted by the budget cuts, Tong said. "We've protected public service hours for students."

The Ingleside library is also expecting other improvements, such as the community room that will be open after hours. "It's nice because in lots of neighborhoods, there is no meeting space," Jeffers said.

The new branch will also have more computers and books. Instead of two adult computers, there will be 12, and five children's computers instead of one, Braden said. Also expected is a 25 percent increase in the number of books, she said.

Despite the economy, the construction of the library wasn't delayed. Braden said that there were some talks about opening the new branch in June 2009 but for the most part, construction was on time.

The new building is a modern structure with curvy shapes and lots of light that was designed by Fougeron Architecture. Detailed information on the architecture is available on the San Francisco Public Library's Web site http://sfpl.lib.ca.us.