Earlier this week, we broke ground on our new library! This moment has been years in the making! A big thank you to everyone who’s volunteered, donated, helped us spread the word, and more to help make this dream a reality. Also, a big thank you to everyone who turned out to support us on what ended up being a beautiful day, perfect for a groundbreaking ceremony.
The year 2025 promises to be a historic one for the Berryville Public library and, by extension, for the town of Berryville. Groundbreaking on the new library should happen sometime soon, so the library should be finished in early 2026. Preparation for the new building has made us at the Berryville Library nostalgic and reflective, not just about the library’s history but also about the town’s history. Other seminal moments in Berryville Library history occurred in 1938 and 1978, so we’ll be looking back this year on what Berryville was like then, as well as what it is like now, as we also look to the future.
The year 2025 promises to be a historic one for the Berryville Public library and, by extension, for the town of Berryville. Groundbreaking on the new library should happen sometime in the first quarter of the year, so the library should be finished either at the very end of the year or, more likely, in early 2026. Preparation for the new building has made us at the Berryville Library nostalgic and reflective, not just about the library’s history but also about the town’s history. Other seminal moments in Berryville Library history occurred in 1938 and 1978, so we’ll be looking back this year on what Berryville was like then, as well as what it is like now, as we also look to the future.
This example shows what the endcaps can look like in the new library.
Lots has changed in the years the Berryville Library has been in our current building. We expect lots will change in the years the library will be housed in the new building we are hoping to break ground on soon. That’s why we think it is so important as we move towards this bigger, better future to remember our roots. To that end, we have created the Berryville Library Legacy Project, which lets donors highlight a piece of local history of their choice by selecting photographs to be displayed on the end of a shelving unit at the new library. We also remain committed to helping create a sense of place through our collection, so we are going to highlight our Arkansas section this year. Each month, we’ll look at some of the different books and resources in that collection that feature unique parts of the history and culture of Berryville, Carroll County, the Ozarks, and Arkansas. There’s lots to explore about this place we call home!
As we’ve done the past two summers, we hosted a fundraising/reading summer challenge--every hour read equals a dollar for the building fund. Except this year was our boldest challenge yet–25,000 hours for $25,000 in just 8 weeks. How’d we do?!
But the work is not over! We still need to raise another $1,500,000 to build the 10,000-square-foot building that would allow us the space we need for our collection and programming needs.
Last year, we were able to raise $20,000 for the campaign in honor of Library Giving Day, and we’re hoping to do the same thing–or even better–for Library Giving Day (April 6) this year. In fact, we’re stretching it out to be a Library Giving Week, April 3 to 10. 🙂
I’ve often written on here about the importance of Friends of the Library groups, in particularly our own hard-working Friends of the Berryville Library, Inc. And that importance can’t be overstated now, especially since we launched our fundraising campaign for a new library facility six months ago.
We’ve raised an amazing amount of money in that time (nearly $985,000–39% of our goal), and we have continued to grow our Friends membership to a record 175 people.
I’ve had a couple of exciting updates on the library that I’ve wanted to post, and I figured that now is the time to post both of them!
If you’re a regular reader and/or a resident of Berryville, you probably know that we launched our fundraising campaign for a new library building 5 months ago today and that we also had a reading challenge to raise additional money this summer.
Yesterday (April 1) at 2 p.m., the Berryville Public Library hosted a press conference outside the building to make several significant announcements. It may have been April Fool’s Day, but we weren’t fooling, and we were so excited to share our good news with our community!