As many of you may have now heard, we will not be able to open the new library on June 20, as we had originally planned. Lots is still going on over at the site but, for the most part, the construction remains on track for its completion timeline of late May or early June. However, there has been a significant delay in the manufacturing of the shelving, so it will not be installed in time for us to open in June.
We will be announcing the new grand opening date once we have a firm ship date for the shelves. We still hope to be able to open later this summer.
This was not the news we wanted to talk about today. But the shelves are definitely worth waiting for.
These shelves were what our last fundraising push covered, and they are going to be vital to ensuring our new facility works well for both library staff and patrons.
If you have browsed our collection in our current library, you have probably done battle with the shelves. The staff fights with them every day. And that is not to insult our current shelves. They have faithfully held our 40,000+ collection of books, audiobooks, DVDs, and more for well over 40 years.
But we do not have the space (or the number of shelves) for them to work as intended. To that end, we have books crammed in them literally from the ceiling to the floor. You can reach the bottom shelf if you sit on the ground, and if, like me, you are not genetically blessed with height, you can use a step stool to reach the top. But this is not convenient for our staff or even accessible for many of our patrons.
The new shelves we are waiting for are being made to our specifications and will be much easier for both staff members and patrons to use. Shelving will be at appropriate heights for the collection it is holding. Little kids will no longer have books shelved 3 feet or more above their heads! The bottom shelves housing our collection for adults will be slightly sloped to make the items more visible when looking down at them. No more lying on the ground to look at items if you don’t want to!
There will also be enough shelves to display the collection appropriately. As of right now, we don’t really have room for everything, so shelving sometimes requires a game of book Tetris. It’s not fun for us as staff members when we have to shift 3 shelves of books just to fit in 3 books, but it also isn’t inviting for patrons who want to browse but literally can’t pull a book out, they are packed so tight.
So, yes, though this delay is disappointing, the shelves really are worth waiting for. The delay also means we will have time to offer one last more traditional, although abbreviated, summer reading program in the old library. More details to be shared next week!
What are you most looking forward to in the new library? Do you have a story about battling our shelves for a book? Tell us in the comments!
Berryville Book Buzz 