Hundreds of people are expected to flock back to the Creswick Road library which has been closed since late 2022 for a total redevelopment costing almost $7.5 million.

Visitation is expected to increase 30 per cent, to up to 2000 visitors a day, with the high-tech new spaces offering much more than just books.

Cooking facilities, dedicated youth spaces, community meeting rooms, a makers room, coffee cart, hundreds of seats and lounge areas, a spectacular children's area and all the latest technology are now part of the library for all to use.

"You'll see things you don't normally see in the library and that's what we want. The library has to be all sorts of spaces to everyone as well as being a library," said City of Ballarat libraries executive manager Jenny Fink.

Planning for the new library, to replace the previous library that was 30 years old, began back in 2011 when the Central Highlands Libraries became the City of Ballarat library.

"This building was built before the internet so everything in the building had to be retrofitted," she said.

The new redevelopment stripped everything back to bring it up to current standards and open more spaces to the public.

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The children's section features a sensory play area, trees, reading nooks, soft seating, cubby houses, tiered seating and safe computer access.

"Our hope is people will look at this area as a great place to come on a Sunday afternoon, to bring in lunch and just play in this area," Ms Fink said.

Access to the children's area is past a long table and a 'wet area' kitchen which Ms Fink hopes parents will sit down at, relax and let their children explore the area.

Upstairs there is a dedicated youth co-lab space complete with a kitchen area where there are plans to hold cooking classes, community events and functions. The room also houses a youth lounge, gaming consoles, computers and the Young Adult library collection

"Our idea years ago was to be able to run courses for young people leaving home, young parents and others and this is the reality that happened from that little vision," Ms Fink said.

It is also hoped Ballarat's multicultural communities will share the space and run their own cooking programs and other functions.

"With a program of events this library will be absolutely pumping and this space will really feature," Ms Fink said.

Upstairs also includes booths, three meeting rooms that community members and groups can book, and a maker space where visitors can use creative technologies including 3D printers, vinyl cutter and heat press, sewing machines, digitisation equipment and more.

Downstairs house the bulk of the library collection with the rotunda and main library space housing fiction and non-fiction books, a coffee cart, a dedicated heritage room, and an atrium area with tiered seating and a large screen where public events will be shown.

Around the edges of the main downstairs area are desks, seating and benches to provide work space, study space and relaxation areas.

"We've gone from 170 seats in the library to over 400 seats. We've put people around the edge because we want people going past to look at what is happening in the library and perhaps entice them to come in," Ms Fink said.

It has been a massive effort to firstly move all of the library collection out before the redevelopment, then back in over recent months.

"If you can imagine putting a huge pile of Lego together ... the library has got thousands and thousands of different components that were all packed away in boxes and stored right across Ballarat. Then we've bought it back together and the staff faced a mammoth task of opening up boxes and 'where does this go?'.

"Everything has changed, every centimetre of this building has changed."