At the recently opened Edendale branch serving fast-changing Echo Park and Silver Lake, Latino parents and their children share the tables with hipsters in oversized sunglasses and stylish jeans.
"It's like common ground," said Annalisa Robles, who moved to Echo Park four years ago. Robles contrasted the library with the neighborhood's restaurants, which often accentuate the community's divisions by catering to vastly different clientele.
"There are no rules with a library," Robles said. "Anyone can go."
The branches are also helping to build new communities in Los Angeles by integrating the latest immigrants into the city in neighborhoods that include Pico-Union, Highland Park and Chinatown.
Since it opened in 2003, the Chinatown branch -- which replaced a converted public school auditorium -- has become the city's second most popular branch and a bustling neighborhood gathering place.
The library's collection of 35,000 Chinese-language materials and more than 40 newspapers and magazines from China and Taiwan draw scores of older neighborhood residents.
And the community room daily hosts programs that draw teenagers, students of English and aspiring citizens.
At a recent citizenship class, more than 40 people crammed around tables as teacher Johnathon Wong did his best imitation of a no-nonsense immigration officer, firing off questions: "Why do you want to be an American?" (Correct answer: Because I love America) and "Are you willing to bear arms?" (Correct answer: Yes).
Wong, an adult education teacher who has taught the class for six years, said his class has also developed into a social occasion.
A table of women spent much of the hour giggling at one recent session while, in the back of the room, an old man serenely read a newspaper in the company of the class.
"This may be the first stop for many immigrants, who want to do better and want better for their children in their new country," said Chinatown branch librarian Carol Duan. "They find out how this new country of theirs works."
In Highland Park, a neighborhood of mostly Latino immigrants, the new Arroyo Seco regional branch drew a Latino father looking for geometry books to home-school his children.
And in the branch's colorfully decorated children's section, Maria Aguilar, a Mexican immigrant who moved to Highland Park 12 years ago, sat at a table with her daughter, two sons and a stack of books she planned to check out to help her children read English.
