X MARKS THE SPOT
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM
The Aina Haina Public Library shares a parking lot with the Aina Haina Shopping Center, which gives area residents easy access to books, videos and CDs.
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Students frequent Aina Haina Library
They also serve, those who stand and have reference sections.
The Aina Haina Public Library, one of the many community libraries built in the public-education boom of the John Burns years, has been standing since 1962.
The one-story, no-nonsense Bauhaus-style structure is smack dab in the parking lot of Aina Haina Shopping Center on Kalanianaole Highway and it's medium-sized for a community library at 11,068 square feet.
It's well situated. With Aina Haina Elementary School, Holy Nativity School, Wailupe Valley Elementary School and TransPacific Hawaii College all within strolling distance, the library is always full of students.
The area was once known primarily as the site of Hind-Clarke Dairy -- the milking sheds were where Aina Haina Elementary now stands -- and the Hind-Clarke Dairy Ice Cream Parlor was a prime hangout during the war years.
"Aina Haina" supposedly means "Land of the Hinds," named by dairy owner Robert Hind, and street names in the area still recall the Hind family.
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