PROVIDENCE – The city’s nine neighborhood library branches are under new management today as a new nonprofit group took control under terms of a deal that culminates years of conflict over control and funding of the system.

Effective today, Mayor David N. Cicilline has formally ended the city’s long partnership with the Providence Public Library (PPL), the nonprofit that had managed the city’s library system since it was founded by wealthy city industrialists in 1878.

The city has transferred its roughly $3.5 million in annual library support to a new institution called the Providence Community Library (PCL), which was formed last fall to protect the branches after the PPL board voted to shutter five of them due to a budget shortfall.

Celebrations to mark the occasion are being held today at all nine branches, most of which the city is leasing from PPL for $1 a year. As part of the festivities, patrons can return overdue books without paying a fine, allowing them to start with a clean slate at PCL.

The new institution’s Web site, ProvComLib.org, is also up and running, and has a link to access the state library catalog, Ocean State Libraries.

“I’m very excited,” former state representative Linda Kushner, one of PCL’s founders, said in an interview. “I’m really excited to have reinvested the libraries in the community – it’s a wonderful thing, and I expect that it will lead to a great revival of interest and excitement about our libraries, which they deserve.”

Patrons’ borrowing privileges have not changed, and they have the choice of continuing to use their PPL library cards or receiving new ones issued by PCL, Kushner said. Hours at the nine branches are also staying the same.

PCL has hired 57 of PPL’s employees to run the branches, and expects to wind up with about 60 workers. Its annual budget is $4.9 million for the fiscal year that starts today. Most of its revenue will come from the city.

This week a search committee will hold its last interview with one of the three finalists in the running to become PCL’s first executive director: Donna Riegal, director of the North Palm Beach Library in Florida; Ophelia Gregiev Roop, director of the San Bernadino Library in California; and Nancy Lee Milnor, director of the Somerville Public Library in Massachusetts.

Kushner said PCL hopes to make an appointment by Sept. 1, “but hopefully much sooner.”

Kushner said it has been a challenge to take over the branches and get things up and running in such a short time. “It’s like a hospital,” she said of the branch system. “You have all these under-departments that you need to have working properly.”

PCL also is still trying to find a box truck to transport books and a three-quarter-ton pickup truck for its maintenance department to use to bring tools between the branches.

Meanwhile, Providence Public Library, the institution that gave up the branches, will continue to operate the Central Library on Empire Street and the Statewide Reference Resource Center housed there.

“We think that the transfer is going pretty well,” said Kushner. “I’m sure there will be some minor glitches – we’re still getting the phone numbers straightened out – but that’s to be expected when you take over a nine-branch system in just [a few] months, and I would imnagine that these relatively minor problems – hopefully relatively minor problems – will be straightened out within a week or so.”

With its budget shrinking, PPL has laid off staff members, cut top administrators’ pay and is reducing hours on Monday.

At a meeting of the PPL board on June 18, the trustees passed a resolution congratulating PCL. “The Providence Public Library extends its best wishes to the new Providence Branch Library system and the Providence Community Library,” it said.

“We applaud the city for recognizing branch libraries are one of the most important municipal services to residents in city neighborhoods,” the resolution continued. “We applaud the PCL for its hard work in designing a strong branch system that is community based. The residents of Providence will be well served by the combination of a healthy municipal branch system and a robust central library that will provide for a broad yet intimate spectrum of library services.”

Additional information is available at ProvComLib.org (Providence Community Library) and ProvLib.org (Providence Public Library).